Frequently Asked Questions

Interventional Radiologists Are Experts in Radiation Safety
Interventional radiologists' unique blend of skills fosters innovation and enables them to quickly adapt their imaging expertise to pioneer nonsurgical treatments that are guided by imaging. They adapt a technique proven to work for one problem and apply it to another. When it comes to the best practices for safely performing minimally invasive treatments, interventional radiologists pioneered the procedures and the standards for safety and quality. Patient safety is incorporated into the development of these advances because interventional radiology and diagnostic radiology training programs include radiation safety, radiation physics, the biological effects of radiation and injury prevention.

The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) publishes guidelines for minimally invasive treatments, including criteria for adequate training for specific interventional procedures, as well as expected success and complication rates. These evidence-based guidelines are used by the FDA, hospitals and regulatory groups.

The landscape of medicine is constantly changing, and for the past 40 years, interventional radiologists have been responsible for much of the medical innovation and development of the minimally invasive procedures that are commonplace today. Interventional radiologists pioneered modern medicine with the invention of angioplasty and the catheter-delivered stent, which were first used to treat peripheral arterial disease. By using a catheter to open the blocked artery, the procedure allowed an 82-year-old woman, who refused amputation surgery, to keep her gangrene-ravaged left foot. To her surgeon’s disbelief, her pain ceased, she started walking, and three "irreversibly" gangrenous toes spontaneously sloughed. She left the hospital on her feet—both of them. Charles Dotter, MD, the interventional radiologist that pioneered this technique, is known as the "Father of Interventional Radiology" and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1978.

Angioplasty and stenting revolutionized medicine and led the way for the more widely known applications of coronary artery angioplasty and stenting that revolutionized the practice of cardiology. Today many conditions that once required surgery can be treated nonsurgically by interventional radiologists. Through a small nick in the skin, they use tiny catheters and miniature instruments so small they can be run through a person’s network of arteries to treat at the site of illness internally, saving the patient from open invasive surgery. While no treatment is risk free, the risks of interventional procedures are far lower than the risks of open surgery, and are a major advance in medicine for patients.

Some of the more recent advances in interventional radiology include:

• Nonsurgical ablation of tumors to kill cancer without harming the surrounding tissue
• Embolization therapy to stop hemorrhaging or to block the blood supply to a tumor
• Catheter-directed thrombolysis to clear blood clots, preventing disability from deep vein thrombosis and stroke
• Carotid artery angioplasty and stenting to prevent stroke