In this issue: 2G uest editorial A self-fulfilling prophecy: A fourth-year medical student’s misinformed decision
11 C orner Stitch A vascular resident explores how to say, ‘I messed up’
4 I nterview 13 Vascular New SVS practice president seeks ‘Parenthood in to enhance vascular surgery communication with members, a personal choice, not a tighten focus on outcomes professional deadline’
JULY 2025 Volume 21 Number 6
THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE
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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Vascular unity: ‘Let’s stop standing on the sidelines while others define what vascular care looks like’ Outgoing SVS president casts vision for the future of vascular surgery as he delivers the 2025 presidential address during the Vascular Annual Meeting. By Bryan Kay
VASCULAR SURGERY HISTORY: PUTTING SPECIALTY ON THE MAP IN A BROADER SENSE By Bryan Kay THE PEOPLE, DISCOVERIES, innovations and events that brought the vascular surgery profession to where it is today formed the bedrock of the subject matter for this year’s John Homans Lecture—“Who put the vascular in vascular surgery?”—at VAM 2025. Jerry Goldstone, MD, an adjunct professor at Stanford University College of Medicine, pored over some of the most important developments in the field since the founding of the SVS in 1946, an occurrence which set the stage for the modern vascular surgical specialty. “When the 31 founding members were gathered for their first meeting in 1947, how could they possibly have imagined what vascular surgery is like today,” Goldstone told Vascular Specialist. “They formed this organization because there was no organization devoted to vascular surgery. Most were general surgeons with a special interest in vascular, some were cardiac people with a special interest in vascular.” What they helped shape
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M
atthew Eagleton, MD, did not go looking for vascular surgery—it found him. His vascular journey started when his grandfather was a patient of a cardiac and vascular surgeon. That surgeon’s calm, focused demeanor sparked something in the chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School in Boston, he told attendees during the 2025 Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) presidential address in New Orleans ( June 4–7). That encounter led Eagleton down the vascular path, from a position as a college sophomore where he was “uncertain and unfocused.” Invoking that personal journey, he used the address to make a call for the SVS to choose unity, excellence and each other to make vascular surgery’s next chapter a proud one.
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SVS LAUNCHES PARTNERSHIP TO HELP PRIVATE PRACTICE VASCULAR SURGEONS CUT COSTS By Marlén Gomez THE SVS HAS ANNOUNCED a new partnership with group purchasing organization (GPO) Provista in an effort to help provide a cost-slashing benefit to private practice physicians amid ongoing financial pressures in outpatient care. The initiative,
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