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In this issue:
JUNE 2025 Volume 21 Number 5
THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE VAM 2025
2 Guest editorial Senior surgeons: Options beyond the operating room
14 C LTI New BEST-CLI costeffectiveness data drop
12 Comment Fedor Lurie, MD, ponders appropriate outcome measures for deep reflux as new valve tech emerges
18 Clinical trials Recent study probes ‘significant’ gap between randomized and real-world data www.vascularspecialistonline.com
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‘RISE TOGETHER’: HARRIS URGES UNITY IN WOMEN’S VASCULAR SUMMIT PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS By Jocelyn Hudson SVS Vice President Linda Harris, MD, extolled the values of “coelevation” in her presidential address at the 7th annual Women’s Vascular Summit (May 2–3), invoking lessons on teamwork from the world of sport to argue that a united vascular specialty is greater than the sum of its parts.
Helping OBL vascular surgeons fight the squeeze SVS Section on Ambulatory Vascular Care (SAVC) set to announce set of new initiatives designed to help office-based lab (OBL) vascular surgeons combat rising costs and stagnant payments during jampacked session focused on the outpatient setting at the 2025 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) in New Orleans (June 4–7).
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By Bryan Kay
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he way Anil Hingorani, MD, sees it, vascular surgeons operating in the OBL outpatient setting are feeling the pinch amid an unforgiving economic climate. With the omnipresent threat of Medicare cuts, stagnant or decreasing payments, and escalating inflationary pressure, they are hurting, the SAVC chair explains. Many private-practice specialists behind OBLs are choosing to shutter their practices. Others with the means are converting their facilities into the OBL’s outpatient cousin, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). For many vascular surgeons in this OBL, the personal costs run high, Hingorani, a vascular surgeon in Brooklyn, New York, details. “This is putting a lot of stress on private practitioners who have invested very
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HARRIS, PROFESSOR OF surgery and past chief of vascular surgery at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York, addressed the summit as its founder and first outgoing president. “Dr. Linda Harris has established her legacy as a trailblazer in vascular surgery on all fronts,” said incoming president Palma Shaw, MD, as she introduced Harris at the Chicago gathering. Harris’ address centered on uniting those involved in vascular care across lines of geography, sex, race and specialty. “We have to talk together, and we have to walk together,” she opined, “otherwise we will not succeed, and that goes for working with our friends across the pond, men and women, Black and white, private practice and academic, vein and artery,” emphasizing also the importance of collaborating with interventional radiology and cardiology colleagues. Focusing on the summit and its associated International Society for Women Vascular Surgeons (ISWVS)—which Harris founded in 2023 to promote education about vascular disease in women and promote women in the vascular field—the presenter paid homage to the team around her, in particular Shaw, Kathleen Ozsvath, MD, Kellie Brown, MD, and Joann Lohr, MD. Harris stressed that a strong,
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