Faculty and trainees in the Department of Radiology recently attended the 5th Annual Symposium on Academic Interventional Radiology (AIR) in Washington, D.C. The three-day conference, targeted towards interventional radiology (IR) faculty and trainees, featured a series of keynote presentations, discussions and interactive learning sessions.
Hosted by Yale School of Medicine Continuing Medical Education, the conference was a joint collaboration with 30 other institutions, including Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Filip Banovac, M.D., FSIR, Associate Professor of Radiology and IR section chief, was a co-organizer of the event.
Daniel Brown, M.D., FSIR, Professor of Radiology and Interventional Oncology section chief, presented on a panel discussing multidisciplinary care of liver cancer. He is currently the principal investigator of the Vanderbilt-led Radiation-Emitting SIR-Spheres in Non-Resectable (RESIN) Liver Tumor Patient Registry, which uses image-guided technology to deliver targeted therapy to patients with liver tumors. The panel covered a variety of topics in management of hepatic malignancy, including ablation and arterial therapy.
“I presented on challenges in managing patients with neuroendocrine tumors,” said Dr. Brown. “The audience was engaged and highly interactive with the energy palpable in the room. It was very encouraging to me as this represents the future of the specialty of interventional radiology.”
Second-year residents Ryan Adams, M.D., and Casey Cable, M.D., as well as IR fellows Reza Imani-Shikhabadi, M.D., and Daniel Holzwanger, M.D., also received travel scholarships from AIR to attend the conference.
“I was really pleased that our trainees were able to attend the symposium,” said Dr. Banovac. “With more than 200 registered participants, it was a great opportunity for them to learn more about the field of IR and to make connections with specialists at other institutions.”
“We were able to learn more about the vast array of advanced minimally invasive image-guided therapies currently being performed by some of the leading experts in the field,” added Dr. Cable “It was a great learning experience and also provided many fun networking opportunities.”
Other sessions included multidisciplinary care of lung, liver, kidney and musculoskeletal cancers, radioembolization, embolotherapy and the role of artificial intelligence in radiology.
