About Us

Quality Improvement


The NVR forms part of The Vascular Society and partner organisations quality improvement programmes. Our aim is to drive up the quality of care for patients with vascular disease in the UK. We also have links with European vascular societies through the European Society for Vascular Surgery and Vascunet the European vascular registries collaboration.

The Vascular Society have been running national vascular audit since the late 1990’s. Our quality improvement work began with funding support from the Health Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) in 2005. We initiated a UK wide carotid interventions audit aimed at improving care for patients needing surgery following transient ischemic attack (TIA) or minor stroke. This work was undertaken in partnership with the Royal College of Physicians in London. Through several reporting cycles we have shown a reduction in waiting times for surgery coupled with low adverse (stroke and death) outcomes.

In 2005 NCEPOD identified a high mortality rate after surgery to repair Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA). In 2008 a Vascunet report on European vascular surgery showed the UK to be on outlier with the worst death rates after elective (non-emergency) AAA repair at 7.5%. This provoked the development of our AAA QI programme, supported by grant funding from The Health Foundation. A national programme involving patients, surgeons, anaesthetists, radiologists, nurses and hospital managers was undertaken to define a national pathway of care and best practice for both care delivery and communication between health providers and patients. We were able to report improved outcomes across the UK in 2012, with an overall death rate of 2.4%. This has now further reduced to 1.7%.

Future plans

We intend to build upon our work with Carotid surgery and AAA repair to develop quality improvement programmes for lower limb amputation, and for all aspects of treatment for patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD). Our reports will be made available on this website and also through the Vascular Society website. We will provide links to our partner organisations, whose help has provided an invaluable contribution to our quality improvement work.