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Physician assistants want to showcase how important PAs are to the vascular team, and learn more about vascular disease and medical management at the same time.

That’s the intent of the afternoon of programming from 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday, June 21, at the Vascular Annual Meeting. “It’s for PAs, by PAs,” said Erin Hanlon, who, with Ricardo Morales co-leads the new PA section of the Society for Vascular Surgery. The section was created in late 2017, and more than 135 PAs have applied to join it.

At VAM, Feedback
Drives Programming

Physician burnout, fiscal challenges, lifelong learning and additional courses on hemodialysis: those all will be featured in this year’s Vascular Annual Meeting.

And all were suggested by SVS members and past VAM participants, said Dr. Kellie Brown, MD, chair of the Postgraduate Education Committee. This committee creates programming for all of the “invited sessions” at the Vascular Annual Meeting: postgraduate courses, workshops, non-sponsored breakfast sessions and concurrent sessions.

From JVS-VL: Public Funding of EVA Reduces Costs

Publicly funded endovenous ablation has reduced the rates of high ligation and stripping, which in turn has reduced costs to the Canadian health system by approximately $42,000 a year.

Between billing, coding, keeping electronic medical records up to date and … oh yes, … actual surgery, vascular surgeons increasingly report feeling overwhelmed and burned out.

In fact, vascular surgeons and trauma surgeons occupy some of the top rungs among the surgical subspecialties at risk for burnout, according to a 2009 study on the topic.

A new Journal of Vascular Surgery publication, “JVS: Vascular Science” is planned to launch in early 2019, Drs. Peter Gloviczki and Peter Lawrence announced at the Society for Vascular Surgery’s Vascular Annual Meeting.

Statin therapy can boost survival rates in patients undergoing repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms, according to an article in the August issue of Journal of Vascular Surgery. Researchers studied patients without documented statin intolerance undergoing AAA repair in the Vascular Quality Initiative between 2003 and 2017.

Leaders of the SVS Wellness Task Force urge all SVS members to complete a new survey on physician burnout, this one aimed at physical debility.

The burnout survey is in an email from the Mayo Clinic, which is assisting with distribution and tabulation. It is the second survey the task force has distributed, all aimed at ascertaining burnout and wellness statistics from SVS members.

“We need evidence,” said Malachi Sheahan, MD, who is vice chair of the group with Dawn Coleman, MD. As chair. “We can’t make change without evidence.”

A handful of SVS members will soon begin implementing projects to improve community health in three areas throughout the United States.

The plans are the result of the new SVS Foundation Community Awareness and Prevention Project Grants. The first recipients were announced during the SVS Vascular Annual Meeting in June.

Back at the dawn of the endovascular revolution, many other surgical specialties were vying to dominate minimally invasive endovascular procedures. Vascular surgery, the standard bearer of open vascular surgery, could have gone the way of buggy whips.

But this year’s Lifetime Achievement Awardee, Dr. Gregorio Sicard, was one of a dedicated group of vascular surgeon leaders who kept that from happening.

This year’s E. Stanley Crawford Critical Issues Forum addressed the current status of the vascular surgery workforce, its existing geographic distribution, the potential for a worsening shortage, and proposed solutions to ensure future vascular care delivery.