Articles & Press Releases

With social media having such a prevalent presence today, it continues to play a significant role in connecting surgeons, prospective trainees and medical students throughout the vascular community. The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Social Media Committee has launched its newest initiative to keep members connected, the new monthly #SVSTweetChat series. Each month, expert panelists will share career advice, hot topics of debate, and innovations in the vascular field with the Twitter community.

Voting runs from May 17 to 24 on proposed bylaws amendments and for the position of vice president of the Society for Vascular Surgery. Immediately preceding the opening of voting, SVS leaders will host a Town Hall from 6 to 8 p.m. Central Daylight Time, “Leading the Way in 2021: An Evening with the Appointments and Nominating Committees.” President Ronald L. Dalman, MD, will facilitate the Town Hall.

Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) members can honor their mentors in a wonderful and consequential way by making a donation to the SVS Foundation in their mentors’ honor. Several members did just that for National Doctors’ Day, with $3,100 in contributions to recognize eight different SVS members. SVS members who would like to do the same may email the Foundation at SVSFoundation@vascularsociety.org for more information. When the Foundation’s new website—now in progress—is completed, honorarium gifts will be available online.

Racial and ethnically-based disparities exist in healthcare. To highlight these disparities, and what the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) is doing to address them, the 2021 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) will feature a special session on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It will be held from 10 to 11 a.m. Friday, Aug. 20, and will immediately precede the 2021 Presidential Address from Ronald L. Dalman, MD, at 11 a.m.

The SVS Political Action Committee (PAC) is critically important for our voices to be heard in the places where policies that affect all of our practices are being made. The PAC’s role is one of advocacy and influence—to educate Congress on the important policies and referendums that can have a direct effect on our patients and our practices.

Medical students and general surgery residents have until May 19 to apply for Society for Vascular Surgery Vascular Annual Meeting travel scholarships. The scholarships are the SVS General Surgery Resident/Medical Student VAM Travel Scholarship and the SVS Diversity Medical Student VAM Travel Scholarship. Each provides not only a travel award to underwrite expenses to attend VAM, but also complimentary meeting registration, a mentorship program, and a dedicated educational and networking program.

Registration and housing are set to open in mid-May for the 2021 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM), which takes place Aug. 18–21 in San Diego. Educational programming is ready to run across all four days, with exhibits open Thursday and Friday. The meeting will be subject to safety and health protocols likely to change between now and August.

The Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) is more anticipated than ever after the annus horribilis of 2020 and the pared-back, digital VAM alternative that was SVS ONLINE. While organizers have previously relayed the changes made for this year’s meeting, Program Committee co-chair Matthew Eagleton, MD, took the opportunity to once again emphasize the significant changes to its structure for 2021, with educational programming presented across all four days— Wednesday through Saturday.

The recent decision from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to reduce the dedicated research effort from 75 to 50% for K awards is a landmark change and will have a tremendous impact on vascular surgeons.The decision affects the June 2021 submission date and applies to vascular, cardiothoracic and trauma surgeons, as well as interventional.

Register today for the remaining Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) "Meet the Experts" webinars, including "Redo Carotoid Revascularization,” to be held May 20. These webinars are free for SVS members and residents/trainees. Nonmembers will pay $35 for each webinar. They are limited to 100 participants to permit an intimate feel and provide for faculty-audience conversations.

Stand up for your feet. That is the message from David Armstrong, DPM, PhD, a member of the Society for Vascular Surgery and a podiatric surgeon.

Rosemont, Illinois, April 14, 2021 – A multicenter retrospective study of the Prospective Observational Vascular Injury Treatment (PROOVIT) registry suggests the use of temporary intravascular shunts (TIVSs) results in lower rates of amputation during the early phase of care and should be part of

Three members of the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, chaired by Vincent M. Rowe, MD, explain use and understanding of the term Latinx.

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.”

New Customized, Peer-to-Peer Coaching Program Fills Gap in Health and Wellness Intervention for 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.

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.

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).

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 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.

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.

“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.

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