Questions about Vascular Medicine

SVM Releases List of Five Tests or Procedures Physicians and Patients Should Question Through Choosing Wisely Campaign

Deerfield, IL -- The Society for Vascular Medicine has released a list of "Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question" in vascular medicine as part of the Choosing Wisely^® campaign, led by the ABIM Foundation. The list identifies five targeted, evidence-based recommendations that can support physicians and patients in making wise choices about their care.

Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question

1. Don't do work up for clotting disorder (order hypercoagulable testing) for patients who develop first episode of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in the setting of a known cause.
    
2. Don't reimage DVT in the absence of a clinical change.
    
3. Avoid cardiovascular testing for patients undergoing low-risk surgery.
    
4. Refrain from percutaneous or surgical revascularization of peripheral artery stenosis in patients without claudication or critical limb ischemia.
    
5. Don't screen for renal artery stenosis in patients without resistant hypertension and with normal renal function, even if known atherosclerosis is present.
    

See the SVM Web site at www.vascularmed.org/choosing for more information.
"One of our society's core missions is to promote optimal standards of care in the diagnosis and treatment of vascular disease. Through this innovative partnership with the ABIM Foundation, Consumer Reports and Choosing Wisely, we are able to contribute to this goal by hopefully improving both awareness and action at the physician and patient level," said James Froehlich, MD, MPH, FSVM, president-elect of SVM.

SVM looked to its Board of Trustees and members to develop the list of five things physicians and patients should question. Suggestions from SVM members were solicited.  A committee, consisting of four members of the Board of Trustees, narrowed an initial list down to seven recommendations. The full Board of Trustees voted on the recommendations using the Delphi method of choice, arriving at the five that became SVM's list as part of the Choosing Wisely® campaign.

The facts driving the Choosing Wisely effort are well known: The current way we deliver health care in America contains too much waste in the form of inappropriate tests or procedures that do not benefit patients, and may cause harm. According to a recent report from the Institute of Medicine, up to 30 percent of health care delivered in the United States is duplicative or unnecessary. Providers and economists agree that this is unsustainable and threatens America's ability to provide the highest quality of care possible to all patients.

While SVM has taken a bold step in identifying and developing the list, our work doesn't stop here. Over the coming months and years, SVM will work with the ABIM Foundation, Consumer Reports and a variety of Choosing Wisely campaign stakeholders to raise awareness of these lists and make them accessible to patients and the public.

Learn more about Choosing Wisely at www.choosingwisely.org.

About the Society for Vascular Medicine (SVM)
The Society for Vascular Medicine is a professional organization founded in 1989 to improve the integration of vascular biological advances into medical practice, and to maintain high standards of clinical vascular medicine. The Society is distinguished by its emphasis on clinical approaches to vascular disorders.