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Radiology

What is Interventional Radiology?

Interventional Radiology is the use of radiology to enable doctors to carry out diagnostic or treatment procedures under direct radiological vision. This X-ray procedure is used in minimally invasive surgery(MIS) – for example:

  • Angioplasty, the removal of stones from the kidney
  • Cholangiography, the observation of obstructions in the bile ducts

Interventional radiology includes the use of (but not limited to):

  • balloons
  • catheters
  • microcatheters
  • stents
  • therapeutic embolization (deliberately clogging up a blood vessel)

The specialty of interventional radiology overlaps with other surgical arenas, including interventional cardiology, vascular surgery, endoscopy, laparoscopy, and other minimally invasive techniques, such as biopsies. 

Cholangiography image of endoscopic retrograde cholangiography

with rendezvous technique;

Recommended Interventional Radiology Textbooks

Image credit: Kimura, Koichi et al. “Electrohydraulic lithotripsy and rendezvous nasal endoscopic cholangiography for common bile duct stone: A case report.” World journal of clinical cases vol. 7,10 (2019): 1149-1154. doi:10.12998/wjcc.v7.i10.1149