Appointments
The James Cook University Hospital:
Interventional radiology uses a range of imaging techniques to help guide diagnostics, procedures and treatments.
Interventional radiology can involve any of the following modalities:
- Fluoroscopy (live imaging)
- CT
- MRI
- Ultrasound
- Breast imaging
The staff in this department are fantastic, always asking if you are ok. Very caring and engaging in conversation with me. Really lovely people, top notch staff, couldn’t have asked for better.
Radiology Day Unit patient, JCUH
The vast majority of procedures can be performed under local anaesthetic or sedation with only a very few complex cases requiring a general anaesthetic.
Interventional radiology provide vital life-saving treatments, which are much less invasive than traditional surgical procedures and improve patients’ quality of life.
IR procedures can also replace many traditional open surgical procedures and by avoiding surgery, patients benefit from faster recovery times, shorter hospital stays and better outcomes.
Many interventional radiology procedures are life-saving or life-changing
They can be used to stop blood clots travelling around the body, drain organs with potentially deadly infections or stop severe, life-threatening bleeding.
Interventional radiology procedures usually involve guiding a needle into the area of interest using ultrasound or CT and accessing a particular organ (liver, kidney, stomach etc) or a vessel (artery or vein), then guiding a wire and catheter through the needle into that area.
Using a real-time x-ray camera, the wire and catheter can then be guided through the body to perform whatever procedure is required.
Vascular intervention (arterial)
Procedures involving the arteries throughout the body such as angioplasty (balloon dilatation of narrowed blood vessels) or embolisation (blocking off blood vessels to tumours or when someone is bleeding internally).
Vascular intervention (venous)
Procedures involving the veins such as inserting lines into veins, inserting filters to prevent clot travelling around the body (IVC filters) or using devices to suck clot out of blocked veins (thrombectomy).
Non-vascular intervention
Procedures not involving the blood vessels such as unblocking kidneys (nephrostomy) or the liver (PTC) or inserting feeding tubes into the stomach (RIG).
