[Diminishing boundaries between vascular surgery and interventional radiology from the view of a radiologist]

Vascular surgeons increasingly claim that percutaneous interventional treatment of peripheral arterial disease belongs to their discipline.In further medical training interventional radiology is exclusively bound to the discipline of radiology and necessitates a minimum of 250 procedures for valid qualification. Training in vascular surgery requires 25 endovascular procedures which do not, however, fulfill the criteria of percutaneous interventional procedures for a number of reasons.The desired expansion of vascular surgery to include the complete field of vascular medicine is not based on adequate specific training, is functionally unnecessary and not achievable for practical reasons. However, this desired expansion endangers the consensus of an interdisciplinary concept of treatment as represented by interdisciplinary vascular centers which offer a high level of competence.