The Melbourne Vascular Surgical Association was formed in 1995 with the aim of creating a craft group that would be cohesive and strive to achieve "best practice" in vascular surgery.
From an initial membership of surgeons from 9 public hospitals, the MVSA's membership now encompasses almost all surgeons practising specialist vascular surgery in Victoria, and has a growing number of associate members interstate and overseas.
From Medscape Medical News—a professional news service of WebMD
Stockholm, Sweden - Safety data from the International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS), comparing carotid endarterectomy with stenting in patients with recently symptomatic carotid stenosis eligible for either procedure, shows superior results with surgery, at least at 30 days' postprocedure [1].
"We have provided in this randomized trial strong evidence that carotid endarterectomy is safer than carotid artery stenting in the primary intention-to-treat [ITT] analysis and also in the per-protocol analysis, where there were twice as many strokes associated with stenting as with carotid endarterectomy," principal investigator Dr Martin M Brown (University College London Institute of Neurology, UK) reported on behalf of ICSS investigators.
The difference in strokes was driven largely by nondisabling strokes associated with stenting, a finding that may have been balanced to some degree, Brown noted, by a much higher frequency of cranial nerve palsy seen with endarterectomy.
Still, he concluded, "Carotid endarterectomy is the treatment of choice for suitable patients with recently symptomatic carotid artery stenosis."
Their findings were presented at the European Stroke Conference 2009.
Time for another MVSA Business Meeting. March 14th at the usual place.
Photo: MVSA members engage in deep and thoughtful debate. Not even the absence of food was enough to distract them.
The MVSA AGM was held at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons on July 27th.
Many hefty issues were debated and discussed, with numerous important decisions made.
| For those who do not know, Michael DeBakey passed away on June 11, 2008. His obituary and a series of articles about him are available on the New York Times Website. |
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