A former senior vascular surgeon remembers the progress of his specialty in Brisbane
Today, peripheral vascular surgery is regarded as a routine procedure, but this was not always so. Prior to its development, the description of a patient with arterial disease could sound like this: “… wasted, toxic, sleepless and exhausted, overwhelmed by that intense depression which only the active mind of an old person can suffer, [the patients] wait for the inevitable end — long overdue amputation.”
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This article is based on a lecture I delivered at the Royal Brisbane Hospital festschrift for William Egerton on 8 October 1997. Data for the original lecture were obtained by personal communication with the surgeons mentioned.
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