Future of Interventional Neuroradiology?

[1119]

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Hey folks,

I am a Sub-I at a medical school in Europe.And I am having trouble deciding a speciality which best fits on me.I am really interested in neuroscience and all things that deal with brain.I've been thinking to be a Neurosurgeon until I did my neurosurgery rotation at my university hospital.It is really hard and I am sure that I cant handle this stressfull work envirenment during my whole life.So now I getting closer to Radiology which is suberb speciality with less stress according to me and it has neuroradiology and interventional neuroradiology subspeciality which is great! I see some neurosurgeons doing endovascular surgeries and the problem is that I am really curious about the future of this sub-speciality.

So does anybody have an idea about the future of Interventional Neuroradiology?

 

[MPMD]

I'm going to preempt the onslaught of replies you'll receive admonishing you for not using the search feature to discover that this topic has been discussed ad nauseum, and tell you that nobody knows for certain where the field is going.

At my institution, the NIR department is run by a radiologist and a neurosurgeon. Both of these doctors and myself believe that this is the future in neurointerventional care and that for the foreseeable future, radiology, neurology and neurosurgery will have a hand in it. I will point out though, that the neurosurgeon of them told me the other day that all of the applications they received for the fellowship this year are from neurologists.

This makes sense when you think about it, in that very few radiologists want to spend a year in a fellowship to give up their sizable compensation to work hour ratio. Additionally, many neurosurgery residencies include endovascular work in the program, and most neurosurgeons would rather not continue their training following an already grueling 7 year residency. Neurologists on the flip side, are potentially doubling their income while at the same time bringing substantially more immediate treatment results into their practice.

I am in the same place as you. I believe NIR is an extremely exciting field and will dominate the realm of cerebral procedures in the near future, but am unsure of the best route to get there. Neurosurgery certainly seems the safest, in that they collectively are making a very strong push to adopt these procedures into everyday practice. Myself being most interested in neuroscience, and like you, unsure of my motivation to put myself through the gauntlet of neurosurgery training, I am leaning toward the neurology route. But I believe that if you wanted to pursue it via radiology, that will also be feasible for the foreseeable future. You just have to realize you will at some point need to make the change from a radiologist's lifestyle to a neurosurgeon's.