Is interventional radiology just a useful thing to be able to do as part of a "bigger job"?
According to CIRSE, ESR and SIR, the many practising interventional radiologists worldwide, cardiologists and oncologists using IR techniques, the patients whose lives have been extended, made easier or saved because they might not have been able to undergo regular surgery, interventional radiology is categorically an important medical division in its own right...and now UEMS, the European Union of Medical Specialists has chosen to agree. On 25th April the UEMS council vote overwhelmingly went in favour of establishing a division of Interventional Radiology.
Interest in interventional radiology continues to grow. Many non-radiologists may think of IR as a collection of peripheral vascular interventional procedures, but actually its breadth is considerable, covering non-vascular interventions (biliary, gastrointestinal and urinary) and increasingly gaining interest for its use in oncology with procedures such as embolization and tumour ablation.
Interventional radiology in our mind is the use of imaging simply to conduct pinhole surgery, both in treatment and diagnostics. IR allows patients to recover faster, and in many cases to undergo considerably less traumatic surgery. IR can offer a last piece of hope for some patients where other treatments have failed.
With a positive vote on the establishment of an IR division within the UEMS Radiology section, IR has finally been recognised as a medical speciality in Europe, and interventional radiologists as distinct medical specialists. The next step will be the national implementation of this decision.
The decision is important not just in terms of a long deserved status, but in achieving significant goals, such as the establishment of a European training curriculum for IR, a European IR skill certification and quality standardisation. A good solid foundation for a highly valuable discipline.
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