Comparison of Patient Outcomes Before and After the Vascular Surgery Fellowship Program at Tertiary Care Hospital

Objective : To assess the outcomes in managing patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) requiring vascular access before and after, a formal vascular surgery fellowship program (VSFP) was introduced in a tertiary care hospital in Punjab. Study Design : Pilot quasi-experimental study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Vascular Surgery and Nephrology at Combined Military Hospital (CMH) ,Lahore Pakistan, from Feb to Oct 2020. Methodology: Patients meeting the inclusion criteria of ages between 20 to 70 years, either gender and undergoing dialysis due to chronic renal failure were recruited in the study. Data was collected at the initial phase when a VSFP was absent and later when it was present. Outcome variables were current dialysis access, waiting time for permanent dialysis access and failure rate about the duration of chronic renal failure. Results: A total of 226 patients were recruited in the study. In both pre-vascular surgery fellowship program time (pre-VSFPT) and post-vascular surgery fellowship program time (post-VSFPT), the predominant functional dialysis access at the time of the interview was arterio-venous fistula (AVF). However, they were much higher in the post-VSFPT, i.e., 46(54.1%) as compared to 96 (68.1%) (p= 0.069). In addition, in pre-VSFPT, 24 (28.2%) patients had a “Never Created” AVF status at the time of the interview as compared to 21(14.9%) in post-VSFPT, which was statistically significant. Conclusion: The establishment of a fellowship program not only benefits the trainee but it improves patient care significantly. This study highlights the improvement in all the benchmarks of the formation