Major vascular complication-free survival and relative risk for death or major vascular complications at 90 days. (A) Major vascular complication-free survival probability with 95% CI in the intention-to-treat population. Data were censored 90 days after the last randomized patient. (B) shows the relative risks (blue boxes) with 95% CIs (horizontal lines) for the exploratory outcome measures death or major vascular complications at day 90 in the low-trigger group as compared with the high-trigger group. Low-trigger, Hb lower than 8 g/dL; high-trigger, Hb lower than 9.7 g/dL. MVC, major vascular complication. Transf.Compl., severe adverse transfusion reaction (anaphylactic reaction, transfusion-associated circulatory overload, transfusion-related acute lung injury within 6 hours after RBC transfusion or severe acute hemolytic transfusion reaction within 24 hours after RBC transfusion); see trial protocol²¹  for further detail. AMI, acute myocardial infarction. RRT, renal replacement therapy. Vasc.Reop., vascular reoperation (specifications provided in supplemental Table 8). Amputation, lower limb amputation from femur to toes. When considering major amputations (femoral or crural) at day 90: 3 (10%) major amputations had occurred in the low-trigger group vs zero (0%) in the high-trigger group; and at right censoring: 7 (24%) vs zero (0%), respectively. *Unadjusted because of lack of model fit with zero events in 1 stratum. All other logistic regressions were adjusted for operation type and age. Odds ratios were converted to RR using the δ-method, where probabilities were derived from the coefficients of the logistic regression using the mean age (73 years) and operation type (0.43); 95% CI was calculated from the standard error.