Message from Dr K R Suresh, President VSI

VSI is entering its 15th year and it has truly grown in stature and of course, in its membership. The annual conferences have remarkably improved in terms of number of scientific papers presented and more importantly, in the quality, which appropriately depicts the progress made by vascular surgeons and rapid increase in the variety of the number of procedures performed in India.

Vascular Surgeons have seamlessly transformed themselves in to Vascular Specialists, delivering holistic care to the patients with varied vascular problems. Apart from being surgeons, most are performing minimally invasive endovascular procedures and have evolved in to very competent Vascular Physicians, thus offering the much needed preventive, non interventional care to these patients. They are also considered today as diabetic foot care specialists and many have incorporated foot clinics in to their departments. Increasing number of vascular surgeons are involved in education and research, as India is sought after for multi centric international clinical trials, because of the quality of work done in vascular specialty. All these augur well for this truly skilled and complex field of vascular surgery.

"Winds of change" is very perceptible in VSI, thanks to firm foundation laid by previous office-bearers, especially by the Past President Dr. Kumud Rai and his team. This website, result of hard work by our effervescent secretary Dr. V.S. Bedi, is a part of this "change", converting it in to a user friendly and interactive portal. It is up to us, the members of the Society, to use this to the hilt and offer suggestions for improvement. More importantly, the website will house various registries and hopefully we will have a large volume of data soon.

We all are aware of the magnitude of vascular problems in India, with exponential increase in diabetes and unabated smoking habits among the population. We are also aware that, unfortunately, only a minority of these are referred to vascular surgeons. Hence the thrust over next 2 years should be nation wide awareness programs, aimed towards the public and also the medical community. The plans have rapidly evolved and are being implemented on a war footing, mainly due to the efforts our treasurer Dr. Ashok Gupta and others. It requires efforts of a large numbers of members, apart from the Executive Committee, to realize this ambitious project. I believe it would not be difficult to implement and would help myriads of sufferers of vascular problems to seek appropriate care at an early stage of the disease. It would no doubt encourage more patients to visit vascular surgeons, rather than consulting unrelated specialists.

We plan announce all our future programs and projects through this web site; this would over come the oft repeated problem of our members not receiving the communication from VSI. Hence we request you to access the website frequently and contact us for any information that may not available in the site.

We look forward to your active participations in the activities of VSI.