  We study the properties of linear and nonlinear waveguides induced by optical
vortex solitons in both self-defocusing and self-focusing nonlinear media, for
the case of a saturable nonlinear response. We demonstrate that the
vortex-induced waveguides can guide both fundamental and first-order guided
modes which together with the vortex may form, for larger amplitudes of the
guide modes, different types of composite vortex-mode vector solitons. In the
case of the self-focusing saturable medium, we demonstrate that a
large-amplitude guided mode can stabilize the ring-like vortex structure which
usually decays due to azimuthal modulational instability.
