Interventional Radiology in Oncology

Interventional radiology (IR) is a speciality of medicine that uses image guidance to aid in diagnosing and treating diseases in a minimally invasive manner. The development of interventional radiology has endowed critical potential benefits for patients and the healthcare system. The interventions can broadly be categorized into nonvascular and vascular. The nonvascular interventions include percutaneous image-guided biopsies, drainage of collections, tumor ablations, lymphangiography and embolization of chyle leak, percutaneous vertebroplasty, biliary drainage and biliary stenting, nephrostomy, and ureteric stenting, and endobronchial ultrasound-guided nodal sampling for mediastinal staging of lung cancers. The vascular interventions include both arterial and venous interventions like central venous access, chemoembolization of tumors, radioembolization, embolization of vascular tumors either serially or pre-operatively, IVC filter placement, and ophthalmic artery chemoinfusion. Also, many emergencies can be managed with interventional radiology in a minimally invasive and effective way. These include drainage procedures for patients with a septic focus, angioembolization for bleeding, and thrombectomy ± catheter-directed thrombolysis for treating submassive/massive pulmonary thromboembolism.