The Kinked Wire

“The collaboration between surgeons and interventional radiologists has been at the center of many great advancements in trauma care.” —Jack Sava, MD, FACS, Director of Trauma/burns Program Director, General Surgery, MedStar Washington Hospital Center

In the audio version of "IR in the ER: The role of interventional radiology on the trauma team"  (IR Quarterly: Fall 2017), author Susan Rose describes how interventional radio...

 If you think, "You know, I do what other people do but I do it a little bit better," you really should know whether that is indeed the case. So , do I really do my procedure with the best efficiency?  the lowest cost? the lowest radiation? the lowest contrast dose? That's the idea.  Be armed with data." —Matthew S. Johnson, MD, FSIR

Guest host Jaimin Shah, MD, speaks with  Raj Shah, MD, FSIR, and Matthew S. Johnson,...

 To be a good volunteer and make a real difference, you need to do a lot of listening to what themes are around you and what people are struggling with—and not wait for someone to tell you what they want you to do. —Laura Findeiss, MD, FSIR, 2019–20 SIR president

As part of the new "Owning Success" column in the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) IR Quarterly magazine, guest host Nishita Kothary, MD, FSIR, speaks with...

If you are in the device world and you have a whole bunch of engineers, if you don't give power to your physicians to help you design, what you'll end up with is a device that works for the engineers—but not for the physicians." —Laura King, Medical Founder and CEO, Elucent Medical

As part of the new "Owning Success" column in SIR's IR Quarterly magazine, guest host Nishita Kothary, MD, FSIR, speaks with a p...

“The application of the interventional radiology skill sets to pain has created a new reservoir for alternatives to opioids. There are brand-new options that didn’t exist 10 years ago to treat patients with pain.” —J. David Prologo, MD, FSIR

In the audio version of "Pain killers: IR can play a critical healing role for patients as the United States battles an opioid epidemic and pain crisis"  (IR Quarterly: Winter 2019), aut...

I think this is actually a model that can in fact be propagated across multiple types of centers, as long as that communication is there. —Riad Salem, MD, MBA, FSIR, Co-principal investigator, EPOCH Trial

Warren Krackov, MD, FSIR, speaks with interventional radiologist and EPOCH Trial co-principal investigator Riad Salem, MD, MBA, FSIR, about the results of the trial and the potential for Y-90 treatment with TheraSpheres in patients...

As with most any career path, interventional radiology provides more than its share of challenges and joys—and many years of hard but rewarding work. And as with any career path, the closer you get to the end of your career, the more natural it is to start wondering, “What comes next?” Surely retirement will bring its own challenges and joys, but how do you know when you’re ready to retire? Will you be financially comfortable in re...

Data have demonstrated that individuals living in many parts of the country not only lack access to an IR but also lack access to any radiologist with image-guided procedural skills. These “IR deserts” highlight a major public health concern and a startling inequality in access to care.

In the audio version of "Crossing the IR desert : The need for IRs in rural communities"  (Spring 2021 IR Quarterly, pp. 12-14), author Laur...

The impact of diversity on finances makes perfect sense when you think of the workforce like a toolbox: Every tool has a purpose and design that makes it optimal for certain jobs. If your toolbox is full of only Phillip’s head screwdrivers, you’ll never be able to work with a flat head screw ... Because we currently have a racially homogeneous workforce, we have one that doesn’t employ the full set of skills, experiences and perspe...

I try to present myself as mild-mannered, quiet and very nice, which wins a lot of battles, but deep inside there’s this fierce sense of “right.” And if there was something I needed to fight for—for the rights of patients or for members—I would go to the mat for them. —Katharine L. Krol, MD, FSIR

As part of the new "Owning Success" column in SIR's IR Quarterly magazine, guest host Nishita Kothary, MD, FSIR, speaks with ...

With ever-evolving technologies, cancer treatments will almost certainly become more effective and less invasive in the future. A new procedure that will likely play an important role in the future of interventional oncology is histotripsy. While the procedure could be adopted by a variety of specialties, we believe that interventional oncologists are well-positioned and best equipped to lead the introduction and clinical translati...

With an increasing number of geriatric patients seeking IR services, identification of patients at higher risk for complications will allow for improved pre-procedural counseling and patient selection, as well as targeted application of resources to improve the perioperative risk profile for select patients.

In the audio version of "Patient frailty and IR: The case for frailty as a geriatric diagnostic tool" (Fall 2021 IR Qu...

What I wanted to do is really focus in on physicians, because I feel like we're sometimes not the ones in the forefront in making decisions in how healthcare is going ... and it's not our fault. It's because we kind of weren't taught leadership skills. —Elsie Koh, MD

Warren Krackov, MD, FSIR, speaks with interventional radiologist Elsie Koh, MD, about her physician leadership training company, her experience as chief...

While I do understand that there may be this idea out there, that the OBL is some magical place, the truth is that I think the ideal scenario is what I have—which is practicing on both sides of the street, so to speak. Because they each pose their own challenges and they each have their own benefits. —Bret Wiechmann, MD, FSIR

Warren Krackov, MD, FSIR, speaks with interventional radiologist Bret Wiechmann, MD, FSIR, about how he laun...

Dialysis, stroke, peripheral arterial disease, oncology, …these affect patients of all races. We know there are health care inequities—Black and Brown patients, and poor patients, uninsured tend to be afflicted more. We can recruit the best and the brightest students across the country and across the world to be part of the greatest specialty in all of medicine—and that’s image-guided medicine.—Vishal Kumar, MD

Warren Krackov, MD, F...

When we show each other these extreme cases, there's a lot of cheering and high-fiving. That's a really fun part of IR, but that is not what is going to advance the field in the eyes of our referring physicians, or of the public, or of the payers, or of the government.—Daniel Y. Sze, MD, PhD, FSIR

Warren Krackov, MD, FSIR, speaks with interventional radiologist Daniel Y. Sze, MD, PhD, FSIR, about his role as editor-in-chief ...

I think we’re really at the tip of the iceberg. I think this is very early—in my mid stage of the career, I will probably not be practicing as this evolves into something that’s the full standard of care in multiple joints. But outside of BPH, this is probably the biggest and probably most impactful change I think we’ll see in the embolization space in the next 10 years.—Sandeep Bagla, MD

Warren Krackov, MD, FSIR, speaks with interv...

The CPT code may have certain required elements, and if you don’t put all of those in the report, you don’t get credit for doing the procedure. Or if the coders go ahead and code it, you could get audited later. So if someone goes to jail for fraudulent coding, you’ll be on the line as well as the coder, as the interventional radiologist—because you are ultimately responsible for what you bill.—Katharine L. Krol, MD, FSIR

Warren Kra...