What vascular skills do general surgery trainees need to learn?

Abstract

Vascular surgery has recently been recognised as a full surgical specialty in the UK. Major vascular interventions are centralised into hub units where sufficient volume of cases exists to achieve good outcomes and support training. 1 If no consolidation onto a single site has occurred, clinical networks have formed to provide emergency vascular cover for their catchment area. In local district hospitals, visiting vascular surgeons can run clinics, perform day-case minor elective surgery and offer a vascular opinion. 1 In 2013 the first round of trainee recruitment at ST3 level in vascular surgery, separate from general surgery, was completed. Vascular trainees will do less general surgery and as consultants they will work on a pure vascular rota. 2

Patient Transfer with Kocher Forceps on the Axillary Artery: A Rare Case of Ongoing Iatrogenic Vascular Injury

“…All of the above-mentioned points indicate the imperative need to train non-vascular surgeons in the fundamental and core procedures of vascular surgery, particularly if they operate in non-tertiary hospitals without on-site vascular surgery coverage. Globally, the lack of basic training in vascular surgery emergencies and key vascular procedures has been a well-recognized problem for non-vascular surgery trainees [ 7 ]. From a root-cause analysis perspective, we believe that the magnitude of axillary artery injury is a cumulative effect of suboptimal preoperative planning and intraoperative decisions and can be avoided by appropriately focused training in the fundamentals of vascular surgery.…”