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Monday, January 10, 2005

The Future of Surgery VIII......
From General Surgery News:Details of the ABS Proposal For a Primary Certificate In Vascular Surgery
Candidates for this certificate will be required to complete six years of integrated training, including approximately three years of general surgery and another three of vascular surgery training.

Upon completion, the surgeon would be eligible for certification in vascular surgery by the Vascular Surgery Board of the American Board of Surgery (VSB-ABS) and would not be eligible for certification in general surgery.

The curriculum for the project has been developed by the Association of Program Directors in Vascular Surgery and the VSB-ABS.

The ABS's proposal "recognizes the significant evolution in vascular surgery as a technically distinct specialty in surgery over the last decade," said ABS chair Barbara Bass, MD. "The novel approaches more widely used in vascular surgery, including endovascular procedures and the decrease in abdominal procedures, has led the vascular surgery community to support development of a training pathway for a surgeon whose practice would be exclusively in the field of vascular surgery," she added.

I couldn't find anything on the American Board of Surgery Website about this. I have posted on the desire of vascular surgeons to have their own board before and think that it is a good thing for the vascular surgeons. It will allow those who wish to specialize only in vascular surgery to do so without "wasting their time" performing general surgical cases. This would also allow the scarce general surgery cases to go to those who could benefit from them.
A disadvantage would be the loss of the "well-rounded" surgeon. This is a flimsy argument given the data about the effects of training and volume on results for certain procedures.
Of course, for the forseeable future, most of these specialists would be confined to the academic center or major metropolitan area. So you may need to travel to cure your ills.

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