The four-day prestigious 23rd Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Vascular and Interventional Radiology (ISVIR); concluded, today at Novotel Hotel – HICC. The Society, which commemorated its Silver Jubilee this year, commenced its operations with 28 founder members and has currently over 1300 Interventional Radiology specialists as members from across the country.

Dr Suyash Kulkarni, President, ISVIR; Dr Balaji Patel Kola, Vice-President, ISVIR; Dr Ajith Yadav, Secretary, ISVIR; Dr Arvind Gupta, Past Secretary, ISVIR; Dr Abhishek Chauhan, Executive Member, ISVIR and Dr Dheeraj Tiwari, Executive Member, ISVIR; shared interesting insights from the Conference, with the media. Interventional Radiology is the most promising and evolving specialty, transforming medical care through the minimally invasive procedures, for most of the simplest and complex ailments needing the traditional critical and life-threatening surgeries. The specialty has made enormous progress in ensuring minimally invasive care, speedy recovery and quick return to regular routine of patients.

Dr Balaji Patel Kola said, the Conference showcased some innovative interventional radiology procedures including Prostatic artery embolization, Genicular artery embolization and Liver tumor microwave ablation. Prostatic artery embolization is performed for benign prostatic hypertrophy in elderly males. It helps curb enlargement and shrinks the prostate, thus provides symptomatic relief, with very less side effects and almost no recovery time. Genicular artery embolization in osteoarthritis of the knee is performed to delay the disease progression, it enables long term pain relief and lessens the dependency of pain medication in all the patients. For Liver tumor microwave ablation, interventional radiology helps to delineate the tumor, remove the lesion causing necrosis and eventual helps to recover without performing a surgery, chemo or radiation therapies.

Dr Ajith Yadav said, over a thousand delegates from India and abroad attended the Conference and eminent faculty from India and 13 other countries imparted knowledge to the delegates on the latest developments. The Conference had more than 30 sessions and 250 scientific lectures. We conducted 30 workshops to train young doctors on the various techniques.

Dr Abhishek Chauhan said, while everyone knows Radiology as a mode to diagnose disease, however not many in India are familiar about Interventional Radiology. Over a period, Radiology has evolved from being a diagnostic tool, into an efficient mode of treatment as well. Since Interventional Radiology is minimally invasive, the duration of hospitalization is drastically reduced and the treatment outcomes are exceptionally good, thus providing the best possible care to the patients.

Dr Dheeraj Tiwari said, Interventional Radiology offers multiple pinhole procedures to treat different ailments like cancers, to prevent bleeding and other diseases, and serves as an alternative to surgeries.

Interventional Radiology, a subspecialty of radiology, uses image guidance to perform minimally invasive procedures. Some of these procedures are done for purely diagnostic purposes like Angiography, while others are done for treating patients. Improvements in imaging techniques and their wider availability over a period, played a major part in the growth of Interventional Radiology in India. The Specialty has seen exponential growth in the recent years and all hospitals and institutions claiming to provide comprehensive care, have Intervention radiology as an integral part of their services. The annual number of procedures performed countrywide has grown from under 5,000 in 1999 to more than a lakh in the last year. The number of centers performing these procedures has grown exponentially from 8 institutions at the time of inception of the Indian society to over 500 today.

The Indian Vascular and Interventional Radiology professionals perform state-of-the-art techniques on par with the best Centers in the world, participate in the cutting edge experimental and clinical research. The Interventional Radiology techniques include cardiovascular, hepato-biliary, Genito-urinary, neurological, abdominal and musculoskeletal systems.

The Society has been proactively working on developing and promoting indigenous devices as part of the make in India program, to reduce the financial burden on Indian patients and make Interventional radiology cost effective.

As Interventional Radiology is a relatively new specialty, awareness among patients is dismally low, despite its overwhelming benefits. This lack of awareness about Interventional Radiology is leading to patients opt for conventional, often complex surgeries, despite the access to friendly minimally invasive treatments, Interventional radiology enables. With increasing number of Interventional Radiology specialists available across the Country, patient can directly consult interventional radiologists for non-surgical minimally invasive treatments of their ailments.