Brazil

We are living in a period of increased civil violence in Brazil. Cities have seen a rise in murder rates, generating considerable insecurity. Vascular trauma continues to be challenging. The complexity of vascular lesions, often associated with injuries to other tissues or organs, requires multidisciplinary care where the main objective is to save the patient’s life. The evaluation, diagnosis, and management of vascular trauma in Brazil varies widely, depending on whether or not the patient is treated in a remote rural setting or in a better equipped urban medical center. In the metropolitan areas of Brazil, the triage, diagnosis, and management of vascular injury is similar to that in other developed countries of the world. The acceleration in development of vascular surgery over recent decades, especially in imaging and vascular intervention, coupled with new concepts of damage control surgery, have contributed to improved rates of survival, with the focus of treatment on physiology and not necessarily anatomy.