An audit of out of hours interventional vascular radiology

Abstract

in a unit performing a large number of angiograms only a small number of patients require out of hours emergency angiography and interventional vascular procedures. Our impression is that this is the result of a flexible and responsive in hour's service. At the present time extra-hospital referrals do not appear to generate large amounts of out of hours work. This level of out of hours activity has implications in the provision of vascular radiological services in the future.

Out-of-hours Demand For Vascular Radiology

“…4,6 The response to the Royal College of Radiologists' plea for audit 3 has been disappointing except for two studies, which achieved conflicting conclusions. A vascular team from Leeds reviewed their vascular radiology database and found that only a small proportion (1.6%) of diagnostic arteriograms and interventional vascular procedures for limb ischaemia were required out of hours and less than half of those patients proceeded to surgery.…”

“…A vascular team from Leeds reviewed their vascular radiology database and found that only a small proportion (1.6%) of diagnostic arteriograms and interventional vascular procedures for limb ischaemia were required out of hours and less than half of those patients proceeded to surgery. 4 For many NHS Tr usts the cost of providing such a comprehensive on-call vascular service may prove prohibitive and indeed the out-of-hours element of 24-hour vascular radiology cover may not be cost-efficient. But this low volume of emergency work may be underestimated as a group of vascular radiologists from Manchester have argued, 7 presenting a different experience of cross-site vascular radiology on-call service covering two vascular centres.…”

“…One major vascular centre reported a low level of out-of-hours activity for interventional vascular radiology owing to a flexible and responsive in-hours service. 4 The availability of minimally invasive imaging such as computed tomography angiography (CTA) and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) may further minimise the need for outof-hours vascular radiology expertise.…”

Launching a Permanent Out-of-Hour Interventional Radiology Service: Single-Center Experience from a German University Hospital

“…We found a high utilization frequency (92 procedures during 12 months) of the OOHR, especially when comparing this number with that of the "ad hoc" service during the year prior to launching the OOHR for IR procedures (approximately double the number). In this context we find it important to highlight that we used strict criteria to define on-call procedures as described before [19]: only if the interventionist on call had been called in for a procedure did we define the procedure to have been undertaken "out-of-hour", as outlined in • " Fig. 1.…”

Re: An Audit of Out or Hours Interventional Vascular Radiology

“…We read the paper by Surash et al 1 detailing the out-ofhours vascular radiology workload in Leeds with interest. We have just completed a prospective audit of our experience in Manchester and would like to make a few comments.…”