It’s a bit like realigning the narrative, ever so slightly. “I want us to feel, as a collective specialty, that pediatric vascular care falls under our purview,” says Dawn Coleman, MD, a leading voice in the vascular surgical care of pediatric patients, as she emphasizes an emerging need for her vascular surgeon colleagues to own their role in the space. Or, put another way: when vascular surgeons look at colleagues like Coleman who are deeply entrenched in the care of pediatric patients with vascular pathologies, the message is: don’t overlook or diminish the role vascular surgeons can play in the care of these patients.
Vascular and pediatric surgical collaboration has been the emblem of efforts in recent years to optimize the multidisciplinary approach to pediatric vascular care. But for the flagship session organized by the SVS Pediatric Vascular Surgery Interest Group at the 2025 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) in New Orleans (June 4–7), that collaboration is momentarily giving way to a laser focus on vascular surgery’s pivotal role.
“This year, we are being quite intentional, urging and empowering our peers to realize, as vascular surgeons, the critical role we play in this space, even those who may not be super comfortable caring for these kids independently,” Coleman, chief of vascular surgery at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “In the past, we have been intentionally inclusive of our APSA [American Pediatric Surgical Association] partners in these sessions. This year, while not intending to be exclusive of our partners, the omission of our pediatric surgical colleagues and the focus on vascular surgeons aims to emphasize our professional accountability to this patient demographic. We believe that our invited speakers will help our members realize their value in this space, as surgeons and multidisciplinary collaborators, and be inspired not just to engage in the care of these children, but to be leaders in that care.”
The intentionality of this session—on Friday, June 6 (2–3:30 p.m.), on the Morial Convention Center venue’s Second Floor (Room 217-219)—is captured in the title, The Critical Role of Vascular Surgeons in the Children’s Hospital. Zoom out from the vascular workforce operating in pediatric care to the vascular surgery workforce at large, and a similar picture of some of the specialty’s existential concerns—declining population of surgeons, valuation in hospital systems, public branding and visibility—begin to form. “As our workforce continues to feel incremental patient volume, complexity and burden of operational inefficiencies, more than ever our hospitals need us,” explains Coleman. “The SVS is committed to helping comprehensive entities appreciate how much value we bring to an institution. We want to emphasize, with this session, that pediatric hospitals need us also, and that we add value. For example, if you are going to have a level 1 pediatric trauma center, you must have the capability of vascular surgeons to support that. If you’re going to have a major pediatric surgical oncology program, you must have capability for vascular reconstruction.”
The coming together of the SVS and APSA was intentional too. Coleman is a co-chair alongside John White, MD—who will also co-moderate the VAM session—on the SVS side of a joint taskforce with APSA to tackle pediatric vascular surgery issues. As the ability to extend the lives of children improves and population health threats continue to rise, says Coleman, the incidence and nature of pediatric vascular problems is ever increasing in frequency and complexity. The taskforce continues to pursue meaningful interventions to advance the understanding and care of these low-volume but critical pediatric vascular problems, alongside shifts in training paradigms that may impact the comfort levels of surgeons from both specialties, Coleman explains. There are “major educational gaps, and clinical gaps regarding what best practice can and should be,” she says. “And disappointingly, we continue to often extrapolate from adult vascular care.”
The session explores pediatric iatrogenic vascular injury, oncovascular reconstruction, rare cases of pediatric venous anomalies, and the nuances of pediatric dialysis care. For Coleman, overlap with other specialties in areas of pediatric vascular care underscores the need for vascular surgeons to step up. “At a local level, hospitals find the teams and build the teams that the kids need,” she says, “and I think vascular surgeons should be valued as critical assets and leaders on these teams.”
