Availability of on-site acute vascular interventional radiology techniques performed by trained acute care specialists: A single-emergency center experience.
Comprehensive treatment of a patient in acute medicine and surgery requires the use of both surgical techniques and other treatment methods. Recently, acute vascular interventional radiology techniques (AVIRTs) have become increasingly popular, enabling adequately trained in-house experts to improve the quality of on-site care.



After obtaining approval from our institutional ethics committee, we conducted a retrospective study of AVIRT procedures performed by acute care specialists trained in acute medicine and surgery over a 1-year period, including those conducted out of hours. Trained acute care specialists were required to be certified by the Japanese Association of Acute Medicine and to have completed at least 1 year of training as a member of the endovascular team in the radiology department of another university hospital. The study was designed to ensure that at least one of the physicians was available to perform AVIRT within 1 h of a request at any time. Femoral sheath insertion was usually performed by the resident physicians under the guidance of trained acute care specialists.



The study sample comprised 77 endovascular procedures for therapeutic AVIRT (trauma, n = 29, and nontrauma, n = 48) among 62 patients (mean age, 64 years; range, 9-88 years), of which 55% were male. Of the procedures, 47% were performed out of hours (trauma, 52%; and nontrauma, 44%). Three patients underwent resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta in the emergency room. No major device-related complications were encountered, and the overall mortality rate within 60 days was 8%. The recorded causes of death included exsanguination (n = 2), pneumonia (n = 2), sepsis (n = 1), and brain death (n = 1).



When performed by trained acute care specialists, AVIRT seems to be advantageous for acute on-site care and provides good technical success. Therefore, a standard training program should be established for acute care specialists or trauma surgeons to make these techniques a part of the standard regimen.



Therapy/care management study, level V.
From the Emergency and Critical Care Medicine (J.T., E.O., I.A.), Tokyo Medical University Hachioji Medical Center; Emergency and Disaster Medicine (S.O., S.M., H.H., J.O., T.Y.), Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan; and General Surgery (M.U.), Fuchinobe General Hospital, Kanagawa, Japan.
Junya
J
Tsurukiri
Shoichi
S
Ohta
Shiro
S
Mishima
Hiroshi
H
Homma
Eitaro
E
Okumura
Itsuro
I
Akamine
Masahito
M
Ueno
Jun
J
Oda
Tetsuo
T
Yukioka
D000208:Acute Disease; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D021721:Balloon Occlusion; D002648:Child; D002983:Clinical Competence; D057510:Endovascular Procedures; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015642:Radiology, Interventional; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D057772:Vascular System Injuries / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000628:therapy*