Abstract

Introduction. The aim of this prospective study was to assess the efficacy of a vascular surgery course (2008-2012), and to verify the viability and the feasibility of the vascular anastomoses.

Material and method. Vascular surgical techniques performed simultaneously on pigs were: enlargement prosthetic angioplasty, abdominal aortic interposition graft and aortoiliac bypass. Endpoints of the study were the surgical skills and the technical quality, evaluated on a scale ranging from 1 (satisfactory) to 3 (very good) for our participants.

Result. A significant improvement in vascular surgical skills tasks was observed during the study years and we also found a semnificative statistical association between the quality of suture and the surgical technique used (Kendall coefficient=0.71, p=0.001<0.05).

Conclusions. Our course contributed to the improvement of technical vascular surgical skills of the operator teams, reproducing in vivo, in pigs, the intraoperative environment as in human patients.

Keywords

Vascular surgery training, quality of vascular suture, aortoiliac pathology