THE FRONTIER: INTERVENTIONAL RADIOLOGY

One of the biggest battles centers on uterine arterial embolization, or UAE, a treatment for fibroids, noncancerous tumors of the uterus that can be extremely painful. Like most IR treatments, it involves far less pain and recovery time than the surgical alternative, in this case myomectomy (removal of the fibroids) or hysterectomy (removal of the uterus). In UAE, the uterus remains intact. Thousands of women have learned about the IR alternative from friends or on the Internet, but not from their gynecologists, who are trained as surgeons. Gynecologists perform 200,000 hysterectomies in the United States every year for fibroids, and for many it remains the treatment of choice. A study at Northwestern Medical Center found that 79 percent of women who got the nonsurgical alternative learned of it from a source other than a gynecologist.

What is the future of IR? As surgeons realize how effective the techniques are, they may simply adopt them; indeed, this is already happening with vascular surgery. But at some enlightened medical centers there is an effort to make sure patients get the alternative that works best. And most experts agree that as the quality of medical imagining continues to improve, the opportunities for interventional radiology can only grow.

© 2005