Clinical outcomes audit in vascular surgery: a shield for our profession.

Surgeons are under pressure from both patients and politicians to supply outcome data. The reporting of crude mortality rates by third parties is both unfair and divisive. Validated methods exist to describe risk-adjusted outcomes in arterial surgery, but surgeons will need to become more involved in data collection and analysis. The Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain and Ireland has started a process of data collection - the National Vascular Database - that could be used by individuals to collate and compare their surgical outcomes. Monitoring outcomes and managing the results could become one of the principal roles of a specialist society.