The radiologist

All the endovascular repairs were done by a consultant radiologist. In 46 cases the radiologist described themselves as a vascular radiologist and in the other seven cases as a general radiologist with a vascular interest. This represents excellent care. NCEPOD is aware that vascular surgeons participate to expose the femoral arteries and close arteriotomies, and some vascular surgeons have been trained in, and do perform, stent insertion.

The radiologist was asked to supply information on how many endovascular repairs they had done in 2002/03, and the source of that information.

It is worrying that in a third of cases (20/52) radiologists were unable to provide an accurate record of their workload for this novel procedure.

Figure 4 shows the number of cases where the radiologist performed no elective endovascular repairs in 2002/03, the number of cases where the radiologist performed between one and five, and so forth.
Figure 4 . Endovascular repairs performed by the most senior radiologist, April 2002-March 2003 n=53

Some radiologists may have returned more than one questionnaire. Most radiologists seem to have been performing a reasonable number of cases a year. It is possible that the radiologists performing small numbers in 2002/03 had only just begun to do endovascular repairs and that their workload in succeeding years has been greater. Circumstances may be changing rapidly depending on how quickly endovascular services are expanding.

Because of the small numbers of returns, no attempt has been made to correlate the experience
of the radiologist with the number of complications or the overall outcome.