The Genesis
Vascular Surgery knows no boundaries in the human body and the same holds true geographically. International collaboration has always fascinated vascular surgeons. The foundation for an international society was laid in March 1950 when Henry Haimovici took the initiative to promote an international vascular society. On June 9, 1951, in Atlantic City, pioneers René Leriche, Michael DeBakey, Geza deTakats, Alton Ochsner, Leo Loewe, Harry Shumaker, Saul Samuels, Fernando Martorell and Ralph Deterling, constituted the International Society of Angiology, starting with three chapters North American, European and South American. A world congress was held every two years.
In 1957, the Society changed its name to International Cardiovascular Society. In 1981, the name was changed again to “The International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery (ISCVS)”. By then the ISCVS had a central chapter and seven regional chapters: European, North American, Latin American, Asian, Australian/New Zealand, Middle Eastern/North African and South African. In the new millennium, the ISCVS faced different problems that led to legal dissolution, and even changing its name to International Society of Vascular Specialists could not save it. The International Society of Vascular Surgery under the leadership of Frank Veith from USA and Sir Peter Bell from UK, Giorgio Biasi from Italy, Vicente Riambau from Spain, Ernesto Molina from Sweden and Rajiv Parakh from India took up the task of going international.
The conception and birth of World Federation of Vascular Societies was not easy. The need for an international federation to unite the leading vascular societies of the world was supported by several international leaders like Michael Horrocks from UK, Henrik Sillesen from Denmark, Enrico Ascher from USA. Multiple meetings were held in Europe and United States to discuss the formation of a federation of Vascular Societies. The key meetings were held in Helsinki on August 18, 2005, New York on November 18, 2005. A meeting held during the ESVS conference in Prague in 2006 attended by Henrik Sillesen, Peter Gloviczki, Robert Fitridge, Hiroshi Shigematsu, Martin Veller, J Swedenborg and Prem C Gupta led to firm plans for the formation of WFVS. It was here that JSVS and VSI opted to be independent members of WFVS. A follow up meeting was hosted by Prof. Hiroshi Shigematsu in Tokyo where we presented the status of vascular surgery and education in various parts of the world and were firmly on track for the launch of WFVS in 2007.
September 2007, the birth of WFVS
The Constitution of the World Federation of Vascular Societies was signed by representatives of six member societies at the inaugural business meeting in Madrid during ESVS conference on September 21, 2007. (Figure 1)
Fig 1. The Constitution of the World Federation of Vascular Societies was signed by representatives of six member societies at the inaugural business meeting in Madrid. From left to right: Renald Barry, South Africa; Peter Gloviczki, USA; Kumud Rai, India; Henrik Sillesen, Denmark; Ian Brunkwall, Germany; Martin Veller, South Africa; John Harris, Australia; and Hiroshi Shigematsu, Japan.
The signatories included John Harris (ANZSVS), Hiroshi Shigematsu (JSVS), Kumud Rai (VSI), Martin Veller (VASSA), Peter Gloviczki (SVS) and Jan Brunkwall (ESVS) and the ceremony was witnessed by Henrik Sillesen (ESVS) and Renald Barry (VASSA). (Figure 2)
Fig 2. Document showing signatures of representatives of 6 member societies
To begin with, the WFVS had representation from six regions: Australia/New Zealand represented by Australia New Zealand Society for Vascular Surgery (ANZSVS), Japan represented by Japanese Society for Vascular Surgery (JSVS)), India represented by Vascular Society of India (VSI), Africa represented by Vascular Surgical Society of Southern Africa (VASSA)), North America represented by Society (SVS) and Europe represented by European Society for Vascular Surgery (ESVS)). South America joined in 2008, initially represented by the Brazilian Society for Angiology and Vascular Surgery (SBACV) and then replaced by Latin American Association for Vascular Surgery and Angiology (ALCVA).Later, Asia was represented by the Asian Society for Vascular Surgery (ASVS). (Figure 3)
Fig 3. Member societies in 2008
Robert B Rutherford lecture was introduced to honor the contributions of Robert B Rutherford to Vascular Surgery during SVS meeting in San Diego in 2008. (Figure 4,5). In 2323, the WFVS council decided to honor Roger Greenhalgh by introducing a lecture in his name.
Fig 4. The first Robert B Rutherford lecture during SVS meeting at San Diego in 2008. Left to right: Peter Gloviczki (President WFVS), Robert B Rutherford, Jonathan Beard (first recipient of award).
Fig 5. Cover of Supplement issue of Journal of Vascular Surgery
Landmark events
- Formation of WFVS and first meeting: September 21, 2007 at Madrid
- First President: Jan Brunkwall (ESVS): 2007
- First Robert B Rutherford lecture: Speaker: Jonathan Beard from UK. Title of presentation: “Which is the best revascularization for critical limb ischemia: Endovascular or open surgery? “
- First WFVS symposium: October 2009, Hyderabad, INDIA. Organised by Prem C Gupta along with VSICON 2009
- First WFVS Congress: 2014, Stellenbosch, South Africa. Organised by Martin Veller
The WFVS has been founded with the ethos of International Collaboration. In the words of Peter Gloviczki, the second president of WFVS “our history and heritage are international and that our clinical practice, education, and research are also universal for very simple reasons: this profession has no boundaries, and the science and art of vascular surgery has no country”. WFVS was conceptualized to be a “Loose” federation of major vascular surgery societies of the world where no single nation would dominate, there would be no membership fee (this was modified in 2015 to collect membership fee from societies for the basic running of WFVS) and that WFVS would focus on educational, political and scientific issues.
The WFVS logo has undergone two changes and the current logo truly represents a federation without boundaries. (Figure 6,7)
Fig 6. The old logos of WFVS
Fig 7. The current logo of WFVS
WFVS meetings
| Year | President | Hosting Society | Venue | Remarks |
| 2007 | Jan Brunkwall | ESVS | Madrid | Business meeting |
| 2008 | Peter Gloviczki | SVS | San Diego | |
| 2009 | Henrik Sillesen | ESVS | Oslo | |
| 2010 | Hiroshi Shigematsu | JSVS | Kyoto | |
| 2011 | Enrico Ascher | SVS | Chicago | |
| 2012 | Rob Fitridge | ANZSVS | Melbourne | |
| 2013 | John Wolfe | ESVS | Budapest | |
| 2014 | Martin Veller | VASSA | Stellenbosch | |
| 2015 | Michel Makaroun | SVS | Chicago | |
| 2016 | Varinder S Bedi | VSI | Bengaluru | |
| 2017 | Arkadiusz Jawien | ESVS | Lyon | |
| 2018 | Alberto Munoz | ALCVA | Montevideo | 10th anniversary |
| 2019 | Kimihiro Komori | JSVS | Nagoya | |
| 2020 | Andrew Hill | ANZSVS | COVID | |
| 2021 | Peter Subramaniam | ANZSVS | COVID | |
| 2022 | Ali F AbuRahma | SVS | Washington DC | |
| 2023 | Philippe Kolh | ESVS | Belfast |
The first WFVS symposium at Hyderabad, INDIA.
Acknowledgements: Enrico Ascher, Alberto Munoz, Peter Gloviczki, Henrik Sillesen and Martin Veller for sharing images and snippets of history of WFVS.