Emergency surgery encompasses more than 50 per cent of the surgical workload; however, research efforts are disproportionally low.

The mode of anaesthesia used during emergency surgery may affect outcomes, but the extent of research and the impact of the different modes of anaesthesia used are unclear.

MEDLINE and Embase were searched using scoping review methodology with a rapid systematic search strategy, identifying any study comparing locoregional (local, nerve block, subarachnoid, epidural) anaesthesia with general anaesthesia.

All studies describing outcomes of emergency surgery with differing modes of anaesthesia were identified. Excluded were: studies published before 2003, studies enrolling patients aged less than 18 years and studies using sedation only.