World federation of vascular societies

Dear Council Members and Member Societies,

It is a unique honor and privilege to serve as the 18th President of the World Federation of Vascular Societies (WFVS), a truly international conglomerate of Vascular Surgeons from across the globe. We are fortunate to be part of an organization involved in increasing the dissemination and exchange of scientific information through global vascular training, research and guideline development.

Our global vascular initiative includes vascular training and collaborative research. Such collaboration provides real-world data representative of wider populations, that makes the results more generalizable and relevant to more patients. The scale of collaborative studies can efficiently generate high-quality prospective data while maintaining a low burden of commitment for individual collaborators. WFVS is in a unique position to initiate this and also facilitate initiatives taken by independent researchers.

WFVS supports a Global Training Initiative that brings together faculty and representative trainees from different countries to provide a variety of opportunities for young vascular surgeons with online presentations and in-person meetings. Upcoming events include the WFVS collaboration with the Rouleaux Club of Great Britain and Ireland called the “Worrying Foot Competition” and WFVS Challenging Case Session to be held during the 2024 Charing Cross Symposium in London.

The WFVS is in the process of creating a series of Position Statements on rare or uncommon vascular diseases. This work includes researchers from across the globe providing their real-world experience through statements that will truly provide a global perspective on these unusual problems.

WFVS is also in discussion with Peter Lawrence MD partnering with the Vascular Low Frequency Disease Consortium to enhance inputs for such research from a wider group of researchers from member societies.

The Global Vascular Companionship (GVC) is an initiative of Dr. Iman Bayat from the Australia-New Zealand Society for Vascular Surgery (ANZSVS). WFVS endorses this effort which identifies countries where vascular surgery services are non-existent or grossly deficient. GVC identifies surgeons from such places who might be interested in taking up Vascular Surgery as a career and pairs them with Mentors who are willing to train them with the intent of developing a vascular unit in vascular surgery deficient areas.

WFVS regularly holds symposia with member societies, usually as part of society meetings. These include the annual meetings of the Society for Vascular Surgery, European Society for Vascular Surgery, Vascular Society of Southern Africa , Vascular Society of India, ANZSVS and Asociación Latinoamericana de Cirugia Vascular y Angiologia (ALCVA). WFVS also has a session at the Veith Symposium in New York and this year at the Charing Cross International Symposium in London, England.

WFVS has decided to honour the memory of Roger M Greenhalgh, a leading pioneer in the field of Vascular Surgery by holding a Memorial Lecture. This will be in addition to Robert B Rutherford lecture that honours another such leading personality. The first Roger M Greenhalgh lecture will be held in October 2024 during the 31st Annual Meeting of Vascular Society of India at Jaipur and will be attended by his son Lord Stefan Greenhalgh.

Finally, Global Vascular Guidelines (GVG) are due for revision and WFVS will play an active role as it did in the original version of GVG.

WFVS members can look forward to exciting times ahead and I wish you all the very best in taking this Federation of Societies to greater heights.

Prem C Gupta
President, WFVS