Jp. Salenius et al., TREATMENT OF PERIPHERAL VASCULAR DISEASES - BASIC DATA FROM THE NATIONWIDE VASCULAR REGISTRY FINNVASC, Annales chirurgiae et gynaecologiae, 82(4), 1993, pp. 235-240
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.