MSK Fellowship with high end procedures!

[sweet potato]

Hi all!
I'm looking for MSK Fellowship with high-end procedures ( cementoplasty, spine/ pelvis stuff, ablation, US-guided)!

What do you recommend in west coast? and nationwide?

Cheers!
Sweet Potato, MD

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[faruqster]

-Wisconsin
-Thomas Jefferson
-Henry Ford and University of Washington are big on the ultrasound stuff

 

[speedyxx626]

Mallinckrodt

 

[DirtySouthM3]

MIR fellowship is very procedural from what I hear.

 

[The Cure]

I did MSK minifellowship at University of Colorado. I can’t imagine anybody doing much more than there. It was awesome! In 4 months I did enough kyphoplasties, sacroplasties, complex bone and soft tissue ablations to feel completely comfortable with any of those in practice. You also do quite a bit of ultrasound stuff for the surgeons. US biopsies of course, but also trigger point injections, hydrodisection of painful surgical scarring, etc. Plenty of spine interventions with CT as well... epidural steroid injections, facet cyst ruptured, blood patches. Honestly the best 4 months of all of medical training for me!

 

[Lifeman]

How do procedures play into a radiologist's job? Do DRs that do a lot of procedures enjoy them or wish they stuck to more reading? Do you get reimbursed more for doing procedures?

 

[colbgw02]

Radiologists aren't monolithic. Some never want to leave their chair; others would be happen to do procedures all day, every day. Personally, I find a handful of procedures a nice way to break up the day and get me up and moving. Too many, combined with all of the other interruptions and distractions, and they quickly become burdensome. There are jobs out there for both ends of the spectrum and most points in between.

Generally speaking, if you compare the time it takes to do a procedure to the studies that I could read during that same period, then I would generate more revenue doing the latter. Of course, that's not the whole story. For one, procedures - especially ones I've done thousands of times - let me rest my brain to an extent, making me more productive when I return to the list. Secondly, doing procedures keeps other physicians happy, which hopefully keeps the hospitals' suits happy. Refusing or not offering them is a great way to risk your hospital contract.

 

[TCOM12]

I think the most important things to look for are high volume MRI with enough procedures to feel comfortable. You'll find that a lot of places defer their procedures to IR, neurosurg, the neuro guy for spine, etc. Heavy ultrasound is only helpful if you want to do academics (most places don't feel the reimbursement is good enough for the scan time, and most orthopods outside of academia won't operate without an MRI).

As with all things, you can do a number of things to make yourself marketable. The only thing that'll hurt you is saying "no."

I've heard good things about IU, Wisconsin, Colorado, MIR.

I wouldn't be surprised if Iowa had good MSK since they're strong in ortho.

Good luck

 

[GoPelicans]

What are the typical procedures msk radiologist does? My good friend wanted to do IR for a long time but ended up in MSK and told me it's the happy middle ground between procedures and reading studies.

 

[colbgw02]

in general pp, the only msk procedures i still do are arthrograms and the occasional biopsy. when i was in academics, we did all sorts of joint, bursa, and tendon injections. the ortho onc service was robust, too, so there were lots and lots of biopsies. we also shared most spine procedures (LPs, myelograms, nerve root injections, etc.) with neuro.