Improving patient care without traditional surgery or using a knife (scalpel). IR is becoming the most exciting specialty in medicine today. Cancer, Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), and other men\u2019s and women\u2019s health conditions are just a few conditions that IR\u2019s can treat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Treating a disease at its source by using medical imaging and through a tiny hole, the size of a tip of a pen made in the vessel wall, makes IR procedures less invasive, less painful, and with less recovery time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Patients will have a decreased amount of complications compared to traditional open surgery. Most IR procedures are done through access into a blood vessel. The blood vessels in the body are like a tree with its branches, all are inter-connected. It starts with a big vessel from the heart called the Aorta (like the trunk of a tree), and it branches out to the entire body giving blood to different organs and muscles such as the liver, kidney, intestines, prostate, uterus, joints, muscles of the arms, legs, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an example, doctors can access the femoral artery in the groin or the radial artery in the wrist to access any part of the body, since they are all connected. Medical imaging, such as an ultrasound or x-ray, can help act as a guide through the arteries show how to get to different organs or parts of the body to deliver treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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An Interventional Radiologist who specializes in radiology (medical imaging) can intervene by performing surgery or offering treatment through blood vessels to different organs and limbs. This process allows for access to the problem without traditional surgery where a patient goes in under the knife. In addition, IR procedures are minimally invasive with less pain and require light to moderate sedation through an IV line instead of the traditional use of general anesthesia, which requires tubes down the patient\u2019s throat to perform open surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most IR procedures are done through blood vessels such as when a vessel that is closed is opened, closing a vessel to a benign tumor, or by delivering medications directly to a malignant tumor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n