Abstract
The author has classified the ideal way vascular surgery should develop, into 3 stages, expressing an opinion on the direction of future advances of vascular surgery while considering the situations in which vascular surgeons are currently placed and the path along which they should progress. The first stage is the current situation in which vascular surgeons are currently placed, the second stage is the one in which vascular surgery becomes separated and independent from cardiovascular surgery specialist system, and the third stage is the one in which the vascular specialist system is newly instituted. The current situation is yet to reach the stage at which vascular surgeons can establish a vascular surgery specialist system independent of the cardiovascular surgery specialist system. Senior vascular surgeons must directly face this current situation, and to begin to establish a vascular surgery specialist system by themselves in order to fulfill their responsibility. The intravascular treatments currently carried out according to their own independent criteria by cardiac surgeons, vascular surgeons, radiologists, cardiologists or neurosurgeons have to be integrated through close cooperation, and for the establishment of a new vascular specialist system, all knowledge and know-how have to be put to use with vascular surgeons playing the central role. We hope for the advent of an age when vascular surgeons having many years of experience with the vascular diseases that have rapidly increased with the aging of society may actively play their role in and contribute to the advancement of medicine.
