Email addresses were obtained from published membership lists. The authors attempted to exclude email addresses that AZ 628 cost overlapped between organizations. This project was approved by the Institutional Review Board. Results were collected on a commercial survey website (http://www.surveymonkey.com). Only a single mass emailing was completed, and the survey was closed after one
month. No follow-up emails or repeat email solicitations were used. All responses were kept completely confidential. Standard two-sided chi-square tests www.selleckchem.com/products/PF-2341066.html were used to test for significant associations between specialty and survey responses. Because some expected cell counts were less than 5, results were confirmed using Selleck SB273005 Monte-Carlo approximations of Fisher’s exact test with one
million repetitions. Testing was done using R version 2.10.1. Results A total of 785 responses were received, representing an overall response rate of 6.7%. Members of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma had the highest response rate, at 15.7% (Table 1). Several emails were received from recipients of the survey, explaining that they were not clinicians, not physicians, or did not take care of patients with TCVI. Table 1 Responses according to professional society Number of survey requests sent Number of responses American Association of Neurological Surgeons 5,481 335 (6.1%) American Association for the Surgery of Trauma 923 145 (15.7%) American Heart Association Stroke Council 4,638 263 (5.7%) Society for Clinical Vascular Surgery 742 42 (5.7%) Overall survey results The total responses to the survey questions are listed
in Table 2. The largest number of respondents were neurosurgeons (342, 45.2%) and the next largest responding specialty was neurology (205, 27.1%). Only 46 of the respondents (6.0%) reported seeing Orotidine 5′-phosphate decarboxylase no TCVI cases each year; the most common frequency was 1-5 per year, which was reported by 442 (57.4%) of the respondents. A conservative estimate of the total number of TCVI cases seen by the respondents can be estimated by multiplying number of respondents reporting each range of cases per year by the lowest number in each range. Thus, as a group, the respondents estimated that they see at least 2,680 TCVI cases each year. Table 2 Overall responses to the questionnaire 1. What is your specialty? • Trauma surgeon = 137 (18.1%) • General surgeon = 19 (2.5%) • Neurosurgeon = 342 (45.2%) • Vascular surgeon = 52 (6.9%) • Neurologist = 205 (27.1%) • Interventional radiologist = 30 (4.0%) 2. What is the approximate number of traumatic carotid or vertebral artery dissections or other injuries that you see per year? • None = 46 (6.0%) • 1-5 = 442 (57.4%) • 5-10 = 144 (18.7%) • > 10 = 138 (17.9%) 3. What is your preferred method of imaging? • MRI/MRA = 175 (22.8%) • CTA = 464 (60.5%) • Doppler = 13 (1.7%) • Catheter angiography = 115 (15.0%) 4.