Can you tell us about your career and how you found your passion for IR?
Kumar Madassery, MD, FSIR: I came into IR accidentally. I know some people out there have a similar story. I was planning to be a surgeon. I found out I have a temperament that wasn't meant for surgery, but I liked surgery and what it entailed in terms of getting patients tangible results. When I was a surgery intern, my residence chief told me about IR. Back then, I had to ask what IR even meant, but as I learned more, I found a way to make the transition into radiology and IR. I’m still with the system where I completed my residency as well as fellowship, and I’ve been here for almost a decade.
Although I found IR accidentally, if given the choice, I would intentionally choose it every time knowing what I know now. My practice is primarily focused on limb preservation, so my cases mainly involve peripheral vascular disease (PVD)/chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) nowadays, mostly second- and third-opinion cases. I try to do whatever it takes to prevent a major amputation, which has been my main driving force—it has incredible highs when successful, but sobering and realistic lows when the natural course of CLTI prevails. Most of my nonclinical efforts are on PAD/CLTI awareness, marketing and referrals which has been quite a learning process.
In addition to all the varying cases that typically happen throughout the hospital involving IR, my daily caseload of outpatient cases comes from referrals to our IR clinic as well as dedicated wound care clinic. Since we have a very large IR residency program, I have been able to develop and foster a true passion for education and help train the best of the best in complex IR procedures and the longitudinal clinical care of patients. Nothing is more inspiring than when a former graduate asks for help on their own case or sends updates on successes they’ve had.
All of these reasons continue to drive my passion within IR.
What inspired you to join the annual meeting committee?
KM: When I was initially asked to join, I wanted to learn about the process and what's involved. The annual meeting seems like a very large, daunting system, but I wanted to find out about the fine details. I wanted to get involved and make an impact for our members, residents and med students who are or may become interested in IR. I want to help them get incorporated into and excited about their specialty. My hope is that they get something valuable out of the meeting. We all have limited time nowadays and it's important to find ways to keep adjusting and re-energizing the meeting and fill it with interactive opportunities and up-to-date information. What I was hoping to see, and fortunately have witnessed, is that we listen to feedback from members and try to adjust as we progress. Since those of us on the AMC are also attendees, presenters and volunteers, the only goal we have is to try to make the meeting worthwhile for all of us. I hope that in my time on this committee we continually make the meeting advance in its content, quality and value.
As the special programs chair for 2024, can you walk us through what to expect?
KM: The special programs chair oversees programming for the SIR committees and sections. I work with the SIR Resident, Fellow and Student (RFS)Section, the Early Career Section, the Women in IR (WIR) Section, and the Underrepresented Minorities (URM) Section to create programming within the annual meeting that’s impactful for them. Many of these members are also early in their career, so helping them become part of the process and put together sessions that are going to be valuable for the members is important. Creating this programming is a matter of working with the chairs of each of those sections and providing guidance to form a program that is not redundant and adds significant impact with a good variety of diverse speakers. We hope that each year, the end result will have been better than the last. I expect an increasing collaborative session for the trainee sections.
Can you tell me about some of the feedback that you're trying to implement this year?
KM: One thing the Annual Meeting Committee is really excited about is that we've revamped the entire meeting process this year. We made a new system for putting this together, which can hopefully make it easier moving forward. It has been greatly streamlined in logistics by the SIR staff. We began the meeting planning process much earlier. One primary aim was to make the overall topics and sessions less repetitive , so that it’s easier for attendees to get the experience they want out of the meeting. Whether it’s an Angio Club workshop, a categorical session or a town hall, we want to make sure members won’t see the exact same content in different sessions. We wanted to make the programming streamlined and high impact by having coordinators of varying experience, age and background establish the sessions. We tasked the clinical specialty councils and their chairs with making the overall outline for their specific subspecialties and coming up with diverse coordinators/speakers. It’s a big, daunting task, but I'm excited about what we’ve put together and the involvement of more membership in the process. A lot of these changes came from feedback we received from our members.
In addition to the diversity of programming that you were talking about, is there anything else about SIR 2024 that you’re personally excited for?
KM: I’m looking forward to being in Salt Lake City, which I think is a unique and great place to have this event. We're trying to incorporate our international members into SIR 2024 as well, much like we’ve done in the past. I'm excited to see the new updates on trials that several of our IR members around the world are involved in, on topics like genicular arteries, the prostate and several other cutting-edge and innovative procedures and treatment areas.
I’m also excited about our efforts to integrate our private practice members along with our academic institutions into one voice, and make sure their needs are met with development courses like the SIR Business Institute. That’s something we’re always trying to improve upon with every year. With the growing interest and involvement from the RFS Section, I hope the viral nature of IR’s potential can continue to grow. Additionally, the town halls have some very interesting topics with open discussions and debates that will hopefully spark great dialogue amongst our members and further the interactive component of the meeting.
The Business Institute has been growing in the past few years. Is it starting to feel like part of the fabric of the meeting?
KM: Absolutely. Private practice has always been an arm of SIR, but it’s a challenge because IRs are in so many different practice types. We have a large percentage of private practice IRs, as well as those running office-based labs/ambulatory surgery centers. With the Business Institute, we are inviting those members to come and share their knowledge and contribute to its growth. It’s part of an ongoing effort to help us all understand the business model of IR. This is of particular importance as conversations about IR remaining part of DR or becoming independent has potential.
Do private practice-targeted sessions and courses like the Business Institute have something to offer for those not in private practice?
KM: Absolutely. It’s not just beneficial for private practitioners—even if you’re in a hospital or academic center, many IRs want to learn how to develop a clinical and business practice. These days, the distinction between academic IR and private practice IR is not as wide as it once was. Many of us in academics are still running on a business model or opening associated clinics and OBLs. The competitive nature for disease state patients is very present in academics as well and so I strongly believe it can only help us to learn from each other.
We have a large residency program and focus heavily on that program, as well as conducting research and doing complex transfer cases. Meanwhile, I see friends and colleagues who are crushing it in private practice and running business models that excel at marketing, efficiency, equipment and hiring. Those are all things I need to know how to incorporate in my clinic here at the academic center, but I don't necessarily have the valuable knowledge at my fingertips.
Those in the private practice space have so much to teach all of us. We’re learning and we’re trying to better incorporate that expertise to help us all understand that we’re all in the same fight and game. We can all help each other together to make IR a unified voice.
What would you say to any members of the community who are still trying to decide whether to register for SIR 2024?
KM: You should 100% register for SIR 2024, as long as it works with your work, family and schedule, because I think we’re changing the game in our annual meeting every year. We’re trying to incorporate more impactful sessions, events and courses for our members so that they really feel that we have one voice.
The intent is to grow together, nationally and globally, to help us all do better in the political and financial minefield of medicine. I think if we all do that together and we get everybody to join in these events, we'll find that we can do a lot more for our specialty.
