Summary

A multicentre prospective audit investigating the incidence, contemporary management and outcomes of vascular trauma in the UK

Aims: Understand the demographics and patterns of injury, establish the current management strategies and rationale for choice and describe the patient outcomes.

All major trauma centres are invited to paticipate and recruit consecutive patients with radiologically or surgically proven vascular trauma. Data collection via REDCap. Collaborative authorship for all participants.

What is VISTA? The Vascular Interventions and Surgery in Trauma Audit (VISTA) is a national project looking to understand where vascular trauma occurs in the UK, how it is managed by doctors and what happens to patients who sustain the injury. The team who are running the VISTA project are doctors who are in training to be vascular surgeons supervised by consultant vascular and trauma surgeons.

When is VISTA Happening? The project will run in all Major Trauma Centres across the UK from March/April to September/October 2022.

Why are we doing VISTA? Traumatic or physical injuries are the most common cause of death for people under the age of 40. In this age group, it is the cause for nearly half of the deaths in men, and a third of the deaths in women.

Many people with a vascular injury die and for those who survive, they have long hospital stays and take a long time to recover. Many people lose one or more limbs due to their injury.

As doctors, we do not have any guidelines to help us treat people with traumatic vascular injuries. We will collect information on patients with vascular injury throughout their hospital journey. The information we collect is already collected as part of the medical notes and will be protected so that patients cannot be identified. The care that they receive will not be different from the care received if the project was not being conducted.

The guidelines we produce from the information found through the VISTA project will be used to help doctors in the future. This may help improve care and reduce the number of patients dying or having serious problems from their injuries in the future.

Chief Investigator: Mr. Ross Davenport (Centre for Trauma Sciences)

Project Management Group (alphabetical)

Mr. Simon Glasgow
Miss. Katherine-Helen Hurndall
Mr. Robert Leatherby
Miss. Hannah Merriman

Investigators: Trainee and consultant site leads at every Major Trauma Centre in the United Kingdom

Affiliations

National Trauma Research and Innovation Collaborative (NaTRIC)
Vascular and Endovascular Research Network (VERN)
The Circulation Foundation
Newcastle Hospitals Charities

Funding

The Circulation Foundation has generously awarded £3,000 to the project
Newcastle Hospitals Charities have generously funded the REDCap database