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To the Editor.–In the August issue of the Archives (109:139, 1974), Charles Eckert, MD, stands against giving to vascular surgery the status of a specialty with specific training and certification. He argues that the great advances in the surgical specialties have come from the "giants of the past generation," surgeons of wide interests. While this is true with regard to the birth of vascular surgery (there were no vascular surgeons then), it should not imply that advances have continued from the same source. They have, in fact, been made by men who dedicated their work and thought to this specialty.
Dr. Eckert believes that the specialist is less likely to expand knowledge than the surgeon who has the general perspective. Progress in vascular surgery is to come from much interdisciplinary work (new prostheses, flow measurements, noninvasive evaluation). This adds breadth to depth, expands rather than confines the frontiers of