The Society of Interventional Radiology's 40th Annual Meeting
The annual meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology was held from March 4 to 9 in Washington, D.C., and attracted more than 5,000 participants from around the world, including scientists, allied health professionals, and others interested in interventional radiology. The conference highlighted recent advances in disease management and minimally invasive, image-guided therapeutic interventions, with nearly 400 scientific presentations and posters covering the latest trends in interventional radiology research.
In one study, Joao Martins Pisco, M.D., of St. Louis Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal, and colleagues performed prostate artery embolization (PAE) on 1,000 men. The investigators evaluated all patients over the short term (one, three, and six months), 807 patients over the medium term (every six months between six months and three years), and 406 patients over the long term (every year after three years).
"We found that, over the short term, 89 percent of patients were better. For the medium term, we found that 82 percent of patients improved, and over the long term, 78 percent were better," Pisco said.
The investigators did another analysis of 112 patients who also suffered acute urinary retention before undergoing PAE and found that 94.6 percent of these patients had their catheter removed between two and 90 days after treatment. Over longer-term follow-up, over 75 percent had no recurrence of their acute urinary retention symptoms.
"There are a number of complications tied to open surgery as compared to PAE, including incontinence, impotence, and other ailments, which are less likely with PAE. I strongly believe in four to five years, this will be standard treatment for benign prostatic hyperplasia," Pisco said. "These data should assure health care professionals that PAE is a safe and effective therapy and that they should always discuss PAE with patients as a treatment for benign prostatic hyperplasia."
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Kevin Seals, M.D., of the University of California at Los Angeles, and colleagues developed and evaluated a virtual consultant for practicing clinicians to improve patient interventional radiology care and make patient management more efficient.
According to Seals, the tool is a virtual radiologist and works by a general physician, nurse practitioner, or any other non-radiologist health care provider inputting a message instead of reaching out to a human.
"It provides a recommendation on what course of management the physician should proceed with. The information can guide care. The information provided by the virtual consultant is curated from cutting edge literature by a team of academic radiologists," Seals said. "This virtual consultant is not ready for clinical practice yet, but clinical users are testing it to optimize the experience. The feedback so far has been extremely positive."
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In the Acute Venous Thrombosis: Thrombus Removal with Adjunctive Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis (ATTRACT) study, Suresh Vedantham, M.D., of the Washington University School of Medicine's Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology in St. Louis, and colleagues evaluated approaches for the prevention of post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS) in patients with deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Participants were randomly assigned to either an active treatment group which received anticoagulant medication along with pharmacomechanical catheter-directed thrombolysis (PCDT), or a control group that received medication alone.
"We found that patients with DVT do not need to undergo a procedure for the condition and treatment with anticoagulant medication is effective and safe," Vedantham said. "In addition, we also found that the use of PCDT improved initial symptoms, including pain and swelling, and reduced long-term complications, including moderate-severe PTS, especially in patients with large blood clots."
Overall, according to Vedantham, the study will enable doctors to target treatments to the patients who are most likely to benefit, reduce costly and unnecessary procedures, and help patients make better choices for their own care.
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SIR: 'Liberation Therapy' Ineffective As MS Treatment
THURSDAY, March 9, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- An invasive multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment called liberation therapy is not only costly, it's also ineffective, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology, held from March 4 to 9 in Washington, D.C.
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SIR: Embolization for Fibroids Underused in the United States
MONDAY, March 6, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Embolization for uterine fibroids may be underused in U.S. hospitals, compared with surgery, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology, held from March April 4 to 9 in Washington, D.C.
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SIR: Children With Migraine Can Benefit From Nasal Nerve Block
MONDAY, March 6, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- A nasal nerve block may be an effective pain relief method for children with migraines, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology, held from March 4 to 9 in Washington, D.C.
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