TREATMENT OF PERIPHERAL VASCULAR DISEASES - BASIC DATA FROM THE NATIONWIDE VASCULAR REGISTRY FINNVASC

A national vascular registry, the FINNVASC registry, was introduced in Finland in the beginning of 1991. The registry covers the whole count ry - Finland has a population of 5.0 million habitants. During the fir st two years 8047 procedures were registered together with a 30-day fo llow-up. The number of surgical operations amounted to 5494 (68.3 %), while the remaining 2553 procedures were endovascular. 22 % of the sur gical and 6.9 % of the endovascular procedures were made as emergencie s; about 10 % of any procedure were reoperations. The indications for surgery were chronic limb ischaemia in 40.2 % and acute limb ischaemia in 11.9 %. Surgery of abdominal aortic aneurysm was indicated in 13.1 % and surgical procedures in the aortocervical region in 13.3 %. Acces s surgery was performed in 8.0 % of the patients. Chronic limb ischaem ia was the main indication, 92.1 %, for the endovascular procedures, a nd renal artery stenosis was the second most frequent endovascular pro cedure, 2.7 %. The mean length of hospital stay for surgical patients was 10.7 days and for patients treated with endovascular procedures 4. 7 days. Patient outcome of 30 days of follow-up was comparable with th e reports from other centres.