Program Organization

This is a two-year program. The first year is predominantly concerned with the diagnosis and surgical treatment of vascular disease. The fellow shares responsibility for a vascular service with an R-4 general surgery resident. The service has a dedicated vascular nursing unit of 24 beds where the majority of our patients are managed. One R-1 general surgery intern and four physician assistants support the service. Besides having an intense operative experience (average 350 cases) the clinical fellow is responsible for the management of a vascular clinic, preparation of a bimonthly mortality and morbidity conference, a weekly basic science conference, and a monthly journal club. Weekday night call is alternated with the R-4 senior resident and is taken from home. Weekend call is one in three, shared with the R-4 and senior vascular fellow. The program is predominantly centered at Hartford Hospital.

 

The second year, or senior fellow, is directed towards interventional procedures, noninvasive vascular diagnosis, and clinical research. Approximately 2000 diagnostic and interventional procedures are done annually by interventionalists who work in the same group as the five board certified vascular surgeons who are responsible for 98% of the patients on this service.

The complete gamut of vascular interventional procedures is done, including thoracic and abdominal aortic stent grafts. Our senior fellow who finished in 6/00, completed 328 interventional cases for which he had direct responsibility. The fellow is in charge of a monthly interventional conference.

 

The Vascular Laboratory at Hartford Hospital is an ICAVL accredited facility which performs more then 8000 diagnostic tests annually on the venous, peripheral arterial, and cerebral systems. The Medical Director of the vascular laboratory and all physician supervision is performed by board certified vascular surgeons. The senior fellow is expected to spend sufficient time in this facility to be completely comfortable with this technology and to qualify him/her to successfully complete the RVT examination.

 

Clinical research is a mandated component of this program. The senior fellow is expected to organize and present several papers during his/her tenure and is responsible for maintaining the extensive database of the service. It is understood that during this time the senior fellow is often taking board exams and allowance is made for this effort.

 

Faculty

The faculty for this program is composed of five board certified vascular surgeons and two board certified interventional radiologists. They all belong to the same professional multispeciality group and are all committed to comprehensive patient care and the maintenance of the specialty of vascular surgery as the central focus of patients with vascular diseases. We are committed to the education and training of physicians who will continue this tradition.