Vascular Surgery 2021
Vascular Surgery - SS Titanic or USS DIscovery?
I started this post some months ago in October, back when the world was looking up, and have come back to it when things seem to be looking a bit better in the UK once more. Maybe I'll have bad timing again. More importantly my views have changed a bit.
Polishing the deck whilst the ship sinks seems to be a significant state of mind in vascular surgery.
The aim of medicine is:
- Relieve suffering
- Allow dignified death
- Prevent unnecessary death
This sometimes is forgotten in the pursuit of vascular fixing.
Vascular patients are often significantly frail, and our interventions are significant - with a 6 month recovery and a significant mortality risk.
That means that campaigns like Choosing Wisely are aimed at helping patients and doctors have frank discussion about the personal intervention benefits and risks.
Vascular Surgery falls into 2 main categories - major operations to reduce risk of catastrophic issues (aneurysm or carotid surgery) or interventions to treat symptoms (peripheral vascular disease or venous disease - major and minor ops).
Our interventions are significant and are predominantly needed in those who have other illness (after all every bit of the body has blood vessels…). This means we can definitely make people worse rather than better. That's why pre-operative discussion is so important. Expectations must be realistic.
Leaflets help - and I try to get everyone to look at the Circulation Foundation ones to help with expectation management and patient planning.
9° Partly Cloudy
Stapleford, Stapleford, United Kingdom
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