A survey of emergency vascular service provision

Recommendations exist for the optimal management of vascular surgical emergency patients. A telephone survey of on-call surgical registrars was performed to assess the current state of emergency vascular service provision across the Wessex and South West regions in the UK. Of the 24 hospitals surveyed, 10 had formal on-call arrangements for vascular surgical cover, 14 had informal arrangements where the general surgical consultant on-call provided cover and could contact a vascular surgeon if they were available and 3 hospitals had no such arrangements. No difficulties had been experienced by the on-call staff surveyed with any of the existing arrangements. Only 5 of the hospitals had formal on-call arrangements for interventional radiologists. We conclude that current emergency vascular service provision is suboptimal compared to national guidelines and patients may be subject to unequitable access to services. This may not be tenable in the new era of clinical governance.