OSF HealthCare Little Company of Mary Medical Center, 2800 W. 95th St., has a new, interventional radiology suite, becoming one of only a handful of centers in the nation to offer the state-of-the-art imaging system. The system combines two types of imaging technology, CT and fluoroscopy, in one single machine, which shortens procedure times and requires fewer trips to the hospital for patients.
For many years, surgery was the only treatment available for many conditions. Today, many conditions can be treated by interventional radiologists who specialize in minimally invasive, targeted treatments, combining diagnostic and clinical experience across all specialties. They use X-rays, CT and/or ultrasound, and other imaging to advance a catheter in the body, usually in an artery, to treat at the source of the disease internally.
Treatments offer less risk, less pain and less recovery time compared to open surgery and are first-line care for a wide variety of conditions. It can be used to freeze and destroy cancer cells, remove blood clots, cauterize and close abnormal veins, fix spinal fractures, insert and fix dialysis catheters, and drain pockets of infection inside the body. Additional areas that interventional radiology can treat include: deep vein thrombosis, varicose veins, gastrointestinal issues, uterine fibroids, pain management and more.
“It deals with almost every body system and you use the technology to solve problems that we couldn’t solve before and provide treatment options that we couldn’t before,” explained Dr. Hamid Nazeer, medical director of interventional radiology, OSF HealthCare Little Company of Mary Medical Center. “During the peak of the pandemic, in order to keep everybody safe and to get certain measures in place, we were only performing critical and urgent procedures. Now we’re offering every other procedure that we have here, and we can do it in a very safe way.”
As OSF HealthCare brings back online elective procedures that had been curtailed or cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it continues to take extra measures to ensure the highest level of patient safety.
