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Interventional Radiology in Canada


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Just a question of interest about interventional rads and how that particular specialty might look in Canada. I've been obsessed with the idea ever since watching the Bronx:ER episodes.:P

 

Does anyone have any idea what the 'typical' setup is like in Canadian hospitals? Is there an emphasis on acute care vs. outpatient, or are they typically more associated with each of their surgical specialities? It seems like a pretty interesting, fun, and good patient-interaction-balance sort of job.

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Just a question of interest about interventional rads and how that particular specialty might look in Canada. I've been obsessed with the idea ever since watching the Bronx:ER episodes.:P

 

Does anyone have any idea what the 'typical' setup is like in Canadian hospitals? Is there an emphasis on acute care vs. outpatient, or are they typically more associated with each of their surgical specialities? It seems like a pretty interesting, fun, and good patient-interaction-balance sort of job.

 

ahhh at the two centres I have been at they do a mix of both - they have a outpatient or inpatient lists to run through and then you have call and sometimes have to bump people for acute or emergency cases.

 

it does look like fun doesn't it :)

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Sure does! :) Have you experienced any of that on rotations? I imagine one would have to specialize in both surg AND rads given the invasiveness of some procedures...

 

Did you ever see any really interesting/bizarre procedures, or is it a bread-and-butter kind of thing?

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In canada it's typically 5-yrs of radiology followed by 1 year of IR.

from my experience, i saw mostly non-vascular stuff like feeding tube placements etc. I didn't really enjoy my time in IR, really minimal patient interaction or continuity of care. Felt like manual labor, vascular work might be different though, and more interesting and rewarding. But pretty minimal patient interaction and continuity of care.

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Sure does! :) Have you experienced any of that on rotations? I imagine one would have to specialize in both surg AND rads given the invasiveness of some procedures...

 

Did you ever see any really interesting/bizarre procedures, or is it a bread-and-butter kind of thing?

 

trauma IR, TAVIs, directed IR cancer treatments, tricky embolizations, neurointerventional stroke reversal of course I guess to name a few :)

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IR is moving towards a clinical model, seeing patients in clinic, and admitting/following them as a surgeon would. Currently, IR is done as a fellowship after radiology, but in the future there will be accredited IR residency programs. Not sure what you mean by associated surgical specialties - not necessary to train in surgery as this is mostly minimally invasive catheter stuff.

 

The scope is immense (vascular + oncology) and new advances are made all the time - hard to imagine a time when percutaneous thrombin injection was not the standard of care of pseudoaneurysms! Our IRs will have elective cases booked during the day as well as add-on inpatients and on-call emergency care.. I've been involved in vertebroplasty, uterine artery embolization, liver cancer treatment, coiling aneurysms, TIPS, transjugular liver biopsy, just to name a few... of course there are challenging procedures and situations where quick thinking and creativity are needed.

 

I know the IRs I have worked with have found great satisfaction seeing their patients being able to return to their families due to their life-saving arterial embolization. Even the so-called bread and butter (vascular access, feeding tubes) can be very important in quality of life for patients, such as those with head and neck cancer. If you are interested, check out CIRA and SIR as they welcome medical student involvement.

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trauma IR, TAVIs, directed IR cancer treatments, tricky embolizations, neurointerventional stroke reversal of course I guess to name a few :)

Yes, the neuroIR is also an option for training after residency... physically pulling the clot out of the cerebral artery, how cool is that :)

Not the type of work that would easily become routine, I would think.

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