Credentialing in interventional therapy in Europe - comparison of curricula including endovascular therapy of arterial diseases

The prevalence of peripheral artery disease (PAD) is continuously increasing. In addition, the treatment of PAD has changed substantially over the last decades. Novel treatment modalities and diagnostic tools were developed and endovascular therapy was established as a first-line therapy. In consequence, vascular medicine has become an interdisciplinary field, involving different specialties such as internal medicine/cardiology, internal medicine/angiology, vascular surgery, and (interventional) radiology. Attributed to the expanding field and to ensure high quality and standardized training, various curricula were developed. Not only within the different medical disciplines but across countries. We compared the training programmes in Germany, Switzerland, and Europe and found a great variety in these curricula and programmes. Nevertheless, we identified first attempts to harmonize training requirements within the various societies: the interdisciplinary guidelines of the German Society for Cardiology (DGK) and the German Society of Angiology, the adoption of European standards on a national level, and the Swiss initiative of the Union of Vascular Societies of Switzerland (UVSS). The standard and level of training is high in all curricula and societies. However, further harmonization is needed to optimize patient care and ensure a uniform quality level across different vascular societies

Additional file 1: Table S1. of A randomized, multi-center, prospective study comparing best medical treatment versus best medical treatment plus renal artery stenting in patients with hemodynamically relevant atherosclerotic renal artery stenosis (RADAR) – one-year results of a pre-maturely terminated study

Renal duplex sonography, paired data. Table S2 Blood pressure (mmHg) at baseline and follow up. Table S3. Clinical outcomes per poisson regression. Table S4. Antihypertensive therapy. Table S5. NYHA classification. Table S6. Significance levels for improvements in quality of life (SF-12 questionnaire). Table S7. Laboratory data at baseline and follow up. (DOC 191 kb