Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) travel scholarships for trainees to attend the Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) are set to begin accepting applications on April 21.

To help broaden its physician assistant (PA) members’ knowledge of vascular care and help them engage and interact with each other virtually, the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) PA Section has introduced the “PA Case of the Month.”

The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) is introducing a new webinar series, with the first installment set to take place this month. The "Meet the Experts" Webinar Series will feature expert faculty and attendees interacting in small groups for shared learning and an intimate feel. The four one-hour webinars will focus on topics that are relevant and timely to vascular surgeons who are operating in vascular practice.

Winter time is never easy in the north. Ice, cold and snow make it tough to walk outside in Lansing, Michigan, during those bitter, dark months. So there is another, somewhat unavoidable obstacle in the way of SVS Supervised Exercise Therapy (SET) app users as they bid to tackle their peripheral arterial disease (PAD) head on.

“A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.” Those are words ascribed to football coach Ara Parseghian, who guided the University of Notre Dame to two national championships in the 1960s and 70s. And that’s exactly what the coaches involved with the testing of the SVS Supervised Exercise Therapy (SET) app, designed to help treat peripheral arterial disease (PAD), do. It turns out an app’s bells and whistles, and trackers and counters, can do only so much— the coach who helps patients through is integral.

In celebration of the 75th year of the SVS, the Vascular Research Initiatives Conference (VRIC), typically held in early May, is moving this year to be held during the 2021 VAM in August. In a year when so much has been challenging, SVS president Ronald Dalman, MD, and VAM leadership considered how VAM could serve as a “homecoming” for all vascular surgeons.

The moving pieces that comprise the 2021 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM), set to take place Aug. 18–21, are being assembled into a blockbuster whole. Though plenary sessions have yet to be structured, all of the invited sessions—“Ask the Experts,” breakfast and concurrent sessions, as well as postgraduate courses—are mapped out.

The year 2020 was one of firsts and of resilience. We had a plague of biblical proportions; civil unrest; fiery political and racial tensions; riots; polar vortices, where it was literally freezing in the Southwest; and, last but not least, the looming threat of Medicare cuts, limiting our patients’ access to care and fee cuts to all of our practices. All of this within the last year.

The Association of Program Directors in Vascular Surgery (APDVS) bestowed its first-ever Lifetime Achievement in Education Award on the association’s one-time president Jack L. Cronenwett, MD, during its annual Spring Meeting (March 26–27).

(A shorter version of this article can be found in the March 2021 Vascular Specialist.)