Procedures in Radiology

[YanCanCook]

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Hey guys, MS-4 here, and I've been contemplating about finalizing my decision to pursue Radiology. Some of my worries are the little patient contact,and I seem to be more of a hands-on person. I worry about sitting down staring at a monitor all day and not having that hands-on aspect. I've seen around SDN that radiologists do a fair amount of procedures, but I was wondering what are the common procedures radiologists do (general, body, msk, etc). During my rotation, outside of enemas and barium swallows and the obvious IR, I didn't see too many other procedures. I'm just worried about sitting idly at a desk and would love to break up the day with different procedures I can do.

 

[MrBurns10]

It depends on the subspecialty. But radiologists can do pain procedures (e.g. epidurals), fluoro, abscess drainages, bone marrow aspirations, biopsies (e.g. breast), and a bunch of other stuff. Outside of IR, the subspecialties with the most procedures would probably be body and mammo, and if you like seeing patients in a clinic setting mammo might be a great option.

 

[partusa]

if you enjoy patient contact, why are you interested in radiology?.
If you can say that interviewing patients for 2 minutes is patient contact, then it's ok. But keep in mind that even if you do IR, the patient gets into the IR suitem you perform the procedure and then bye bye. Some good IR guys follow their patients for a day or two, to look for complications. If you want to be involved in patient care, the imaging field is not for you. This is my point of view.

 

[Pontifex Maximus]

You can like patient contact and patients and do rads 🙂 Obviously, if its your primary motivator, you won't find it here. But for those who just enjoy seeing pts occasionally and not the whole continuity deal, there is more than enough in IR and mammo stuff.

Really just depends what you want.

 

[YanCanCook]

Seeing patients isn't the most important thing to me. Just talking with them briefly is fine with me. I just enjoy talking and consulting with people, either patients or other fellow physicians.

 

[irwarrior]

Modern day IR is changing. I am a practicing IR . All of our IR physicians have clinic and see anywhere between 5-15 patients in a 1/2 day. As a group we admit about 10 to 15 patients a week to our own service in the hospital. And, we perform about 20-30 inpatient consults a week.

The new IR is far busier than the conventional diagnostic radiologist and more reflects a surgical lifestyle. I have patients where I basically act as the primary on. ie for my liver cancer patients I order the scans, labs, ad make recommendtions and refer when I nee palliative care consults etc. Also, if I have an aneurysm patient I will follow them until their size is adequate for treatment and follow them post procedure to make sure they have no endoleaks etc.
If I have a PVD patient I make sure they are on a statin, ace-inhibitor and an antiplatelet.

 

[colbgw02]

Not that a resident's point-of-view is really needed to validate what irwarrior said, but his comments are spot-on. The SIR is really pushing to make interventionalists basically minimally invasive surgeons. That's part of the reason why we're starting to see the training pathways for IR and DR diverge. partusa's experience is probably still relatively common, but it's also going the way of the dodo.

 

[UditNarayan]

Dear IRwarrior,

Are you in an academic or private practice setting? Thanks so much for your insight and sharing the great information!

Udit

Modern day IR is changing. I am a practicing IR . All of our IR physicians have clinic and see anywhere between 5-15 patients in a 1/2 day. As a group we admit about 10 to 15 patients a week to our own service in the hospital. And, we perform about 20-30 inpatient consults a week.

The new IR is far busier than the conventional diagnostic radiologist and more reflects a surgical lifestyle. I have patients where I basically act as the primary on. ie for my liver cancer patients I order the scans, labs, ad make recommendtions and refer when I nee palliative care consults etc. Also, if I have an aneurysm patient I will follow them until their size is adequate for treatment and follow them post procedure to make sure they have no endoleaks etc.
If I have a PVD patient I make sure they are on a statin, ace-inhibitor and an antiplatelet.