VASCERN's Patient Pathways aim to improve the care and management of patients with rare vascular diseases. These documents are the deliverables of our dedicated Work Package on "Patient Pathways". They indicate the optimal clinical criteria necessary for the evaluation of the patient, the investigations performed to reach diagnosis, the evaluation of the patient once the diagnosis is made, and the follow-up and management/treatment recommended. Disease (or group of disease)-specific patient pathways are being developed by each of VASCERN's Rare Disease Working Groups (RDWGs). They often involve lengthy discussions between our healthcare professionals and patient advocates, over the course of several meetings, before reaching consensus. Several VASCERN patient pathways have already been produced and published on our website while others are currently under development.

Already available are the Hereditary Haemorrhagic Telangiectasia Working Group (HHT WG)'s patient pathway on HHT, the Heritable Thoracic Aortic Diseases Working Group (HTAD WG)'s patient pathway on HTAD, The Medium-Sized Arteries Working Group (MSA WG)'s patient pathway on vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (vEDS), and the Vascular Anomalies Working Group (VASCA-WG)'s patient pathway on Severe/Rare Infantile Hemangioma. VASCERN has already translated some patient pathways into several EU languages by providing a first translation to our members (healthcare professionals and patient advocates) who then reviewed and validated the translations in their native languages.

We will shortly finalise and publish the Primary and pediatric lymphedema (PPL) patient pathway by the PPL-WG and three new patient pathways by the VASCA WG on capillary malformations, venous malformations and lymphatic malformations. We will continue to produce and update patient pathways for the various rare diseases of our network with the aim of improving and homogenising care in Europe.

All of VASCERN's patient pathways, arranged by RDWG, can be found at the following page of our website.