A one-stop vascular clinic: a practical proposition with non-invasive assessment

One-stop clinics are becoming increasingly popular with both patients and their general practitioners. Traditionally, vascular patients have needed to attend hospital two or three times for clinical examination and investigations. We have introduced a one-stop clinic for patients with lower limb arterial disease (LLAD) and aortic aneurysms. In 92 clinics over 2 years, 1194 new patients and 1409 follow-up patients were seen, with LLAD being the largest single category comprising 40% of the patients seen, followed by varicose veins (25%), carotid disease (12%), and aortic aneurysms (8%). Overall, 57% of patients had non-invasive imaging performed, either in the clinic or on a separate visit. Performing all LLAD and aortic scans in the clinic requires 1.9 h of imaging time per clinic. Extending in-clinic scanning to patients with varicose veins and carotid disease would increase this to 3.9 h of scanning per clinic and require a duplex scanner and an additional technologist in the clinic.