Telehealth provides a comprehensive approach to the surgical patient.

BACKGROUND: This study describes telehealth use within the Department of Surgery in a large urban academic medical center and its role in diverse surgical patients. METHODS: We performed a retrospective descriptive study of video telehealth visits conducted by an academic urban surgery department from February 2017 to November 2017. We report our experience in accordance with the National Quality Forum recommended domains of access, experience and effectiveness. RESULTS: Six hundred and fifty-five (655) video telehealth encounters were performed during the study period: 152 were immediate postoperative visits, 424 were established patient visits, and 79 were group sessions. Our 30-day readmission rate of the post-operative visits was very low (4 of 152). One hundred and forty-one (141) patient survey responses show very high satisfaction and time savings. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate a single institution's successful experience in offering telehealth to surgical patients in an urban setting.

Arteriovenous Fistula Creation by Nephrologist Access Surgeons Worldwide.

Several years ago, we published an article in this journal entitled "Autologous Arteriovenous Fistula Creation by Nephrologists." The goal of that effort was to review outcomes published by nephrologist access surgeons from around the world. An attempt was also made to define the elements that were necessary for successful autologous fistula creation in hopes that they might be used by others in an effort to increase the number of and durability of autologous fistulas in the dialysis population. Our goal, here, is to update the previous information based on recently published literature to better understand the role that nephrologist access surgeons play in the care of our dialysis patients worldwide.