“Go back home and get a vascular center or […] get a vascular department, or, you know, assess the compensation [survey] results and, at least start considering a union, if it’s something feasible.” That was the new Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) President Keith Calligaro’s distillation of the burning issues and strategies to empower vascular surgeons at the 2025 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) in New Orleans (June 4–7).
Are heart and vascular centers beneficial to vascular surgeons? Does the way vascular surgery is structured within a division under general surgery, or as a department on its own matter? What does the SVS compensation study in the US reveal? Should vascular surgeons unionize? This year’s E. Stanley Crawford Critical Issues Forum at VAM sought to address some of the structural and economic issues facing vascular surgeons as individuals—and those that challenge the specialty as an entity. Calligaro is chief of vascular surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, and as the incoming SVS president was responsible for organizing the forum.
“[…] The point of the meeting was, how do I empower vascular surgeons to better position ourselves? But also, how to help our patients by using the same mechanisms?” he asked.
