Medical Excellence Ever-Evolving

Interventional Radiology, also known as vascular and interventional radiology, offers image guided diagnosis and treatment of diseases or conditions in every organ of your body. 

Medical staff who are part of this independent medical specialty handle a broad range of procedures, with a unifying concept being to offer the most modern and least invasive techniques available to minimize risk to patients and improve health outcomes while under our care. 

At Community Healthcare System, interventional radiology services support patients in cancer care, urology, OB-GYN, gastroenerology, musculoskeletal, nephrology and vascular departments.

Interventional radiologists are recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. Doctors in this field are board-certified physicians with additional advanced training in minimally invasive, targeted treatments. As the medical specialty that works with angioplasty and the catheter-delivered stent, interventional radiologists are seen as leaders in modern minimally invasive medicine.

Advances and Services

Many conditions once requiring surgery can be treated by Interventional Radiology: 

• Angioplasty and embolization therapy to treat bone and kidney tumors and spinal cord vascular malformations.
• Catheter-diverted thrombolysis to clear blood clots and prevent disability from deep vein thrombosis and stroke.
• Embolization for GI bleeding, pelvic and spleen trauma.
• Embolization to stop hemorrhaging or block the blood supply to a tumor.
• Stents for liver cancer patients.
• Tube placement to improve blood flow in livers damaged from cirrhosis and hepatitis C.
• Tumor ablation.

Guiding you to Better Health

At Community Healthcare System, the Interventional Radiology team has an key role in quality care, diagnosis and treatment of cancer and urology. Our non-surgical procedure can reduce trauma, help collect accurate biopsies, cut down on recovery time and reduce chance of infection.

Our team uses X-rays, arteriography, bone desitometry. computerized tomography (CT), flouroscopy, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), mammography, positron emission tomography (PET), ultrasound, venography and other advanced imaging techniques to get images to understand, visualize and diagnose the full scope of your disease.

We map out the procedure tailored to your individual patient needs. During the procedure, we guide interventional instruments through the body -- generally with needles and narrow tubes or catheters -- through a small opening in the skin to get to the site of the problem.

We are at your side when image-guided needle biopsies are performed and when ports are put in for chemotherapy treatment.
Our team is called on to place radioactive seeds in robotic radiosurgery, or CyberKnife, to attack cancerous and benign tumors at its source.
We play a major role in chemoembolization treatment. In chemoembolization, anti-cancer drugs are injected directly into the blood vessel feeding a cancerous tumor. In addition, synthetic material is placed inside the blood vessels that supply blood to the tumor, in effect trapping the chemotherapy in the tumor.

We offer skilled catheter placement techniques in dialysis and other types of urology and nephrology treatment.

Other services provided through Interventional Radiology include:

• Cerebral angiography, or cerebral arteriogram,  a diagnostic test that can help your doctor find blockages in the blood vessels of your head and neck. These blockages can lead to a stroke or aneurysm.
• Fistulagrams, an X-ray procedure to look at the blood flow and check for blood clots or other blockages in your fistula.
• Inferior Vena Cava Filter (IVC), a type of vascular filter that is implanted by interventional radiologists or vascular surgeons to prevent clots from traveling to the lungs.
• Kyphoplasty, the surgical filling of an injured or collapsed vertebra. This procedure restores original shape and configuration and relieves pain from spinal compression.
• Lumbar puncture.
• Myelography, diagnostic imaging to look for problems in the spinal canal, including the spinal cord, nerve roots, and other tissues.
• Nuclear Medicine, including nuclear cardiology.
• Transjugular Intrahepatic Portosystemic Shunt (TIPS), a tube placement that acts as a liver bypass.
• Vericose Vein Sclerotherapy, a medical procedure to eliminate varicose veins and spider veins.

To Learn More

Interventional Radiology is housed at all of our hospitals.

To learn more about your course of care visit our cardiology, cancer care, urology, and Cath Lab pages.