Inspirations, favorite quotes and more about speakers at SIR 2023—from well-known luminaries to first-time presenters! In this article: Michael C. Brunner, MD, FSIR; Alexander Ding, MD; Quinn C. Meisinger, MD; Maria Antonella Ruffino, MD, EBIR, FCIRSE; Anthony Tadros, MD; Srini Tummala, MD, FSIR; and Vincent Vidal, MD, PhD. Click the names below to find each one in the SIR 2023 program.
Michael C. Brunner, MD, FSIR
Why did you choose IR?
Michael C. Brunner, MD, FSIR
To me, success in IR requires the ideal combination of cognitive and technical skills. The frequency with which innovation disrupts the field makes for a very challenging but rewarding career.
How do you explain your work to non-IRs?
We navigate under imaging a (hair-sized) needle or a tube (about the diameter of spaghetti) to either open or close a vessel affected by disease, biopsy a lesion, and/or deliver drugs, particles, cells or energy.
What would you say drives your work or inspires you?
I feel inspired by the many innovative solutions from IRs who preceded me and those whom I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside or mentor since. It’s truly the archetype for accelerating bench to bedside solutions to very difficult problems.
What is your favorite or most meaningful memory/experience as an IR?
One of my favorite memories is of a patient referred to me suddenly bleeding heavily after a liver biopsy. We quickly put him on the table and I just managed to embolize the bleeder before he completely lost his blood pressure. He said to me: “That was almost it doc, wasn’t it?” I nodded. He then asked if he could have lunch—the beauty of IR.
What is your favorite quote (if you have one)?
My favorite quote is from Harvey Neiman at the SIR Fellow’s dinner during my presidency year: “They’ve been predicting the end of IR for as long as I can remember. Most of ‘them’ have faded into oblivion but we’re still here, aren’t we?”
Alexander Ding, MD
Why did you choose IR?
Theodore Grudzinski
Alexander Ding, MD
I chose IR because I love advanced technology, and to be able to use these technologies to perform procedures in minimally invasive and creative ways to take care of patients really feels like we are operating in the future.
How do you explain your work to non-IRs?
Most other physicians understand the work IRs do. What often surprises them, though, is the breadth and scope of our work. For nonphysicians, I often jokingly explain IR as playing video games inside people's bodies.
What would you say drives your work or inspires you?
I'm at SIR giving a talk about nonclinical opportunities. What drives me is getting more physicians into all aspects of healthcare, including nonclinical roles such as administration, financing, innovation and policy. What inspires me is when I see physicians bring their professional ethos and ethics of always putting the patient first into their work in these other important nonclinical healthcare roles.
Quinn C. Meisinger, MD
Why did you choose IR?
Quinn C. Meisinger, MD
I choose IR as a career due to the variety of technical skills needed. My dad was a construction worker and passed on his hand–eye skills. IR let me use these skills.
How do you explain your work to non-IRs?
I do surgery everyday but do not call myself a surgeon.
What would you say drives your work or inspires you?
Training the next generation of IR.
What is your favorite or most meaningful memory/experience as an IR?
Saving the father of six with a PE thrombectomy. He sends me a holiday card every year.
What is your favorite quote (if you have one)?
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”—Thomas Edison
Maria Antonella Ruffino, MD, EBIR, FCIRSE
Why did you choose IR?
Maria Antonella Ruffino, MD, EBIR, FCIRSE
When I was a trainee, I always wanted to be a surgeon so, after my graduation, I started my internship in the surgery department. Many patients were referred to IR for the management of biliary or vascular pathologies. It was my first contact with IR, which was not that well known by medicine students at that time. In this way, I had the opportunity to know more about interventional radiology and its potential to solve clinical situations once treatable only by open surgery. Those were also the times of the first EVARs in Italy and in my hospital these procedures were performed by IRs at the department of vascular interventional radiology. I was fascinated by this discipline and so I chose radiology as a postgraduation course instead of surgery, focusing on IR and then vascular interventional radiology. A few years later, I started working at the department of vascular interventional radiology where I worked for almost 17 years before moving to Switzerland.
How do you explain your work to non-IRs?
Despite IR making significant progress over the last decades, many non-IRs still don't know exactly what an IR does and our commitment to patients. With non-IRs, I usually say that an IR performs minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures (nonvascular and vascular) under the guidance and control of radiological methods, such as ultrasound, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and fluoroscopy. We are clinical specialists, as surgeons, who assess the patients and follow them after the procedure.
What would you say drives your work or inspires you?
My work is driven by the opportunity to work in a field of medicine that is always evolving thanks to the continuing improvement of our devices and techniques. Thus, IR gives us the chance to work in direct contact with patients following them before and after the procedure as in a clinical discipline. That is actually how IR should be considered: a full clinical specialty. I was very lucky since I had the opportunity to work with the pioneers of IR and be inspired by valuable mentors who had a great passion for this work. It is the same passion that I have today and that I would like to transmit to young IRs. As a woman, I also believe that my female colleagues have to know that IR is not just a ”man's world” but that we can achieve the same goals if we are motivated and supported.
What is your favorite or most meaningful memory/experience as an IR?
I will always remember the first patient I treated for critical limb ischemia. He had pain at rest and foot ulcers due to tibial artery occlusion. He could not sleep for the previous 5 days. A few minutes after the revascularization he fell asleep because his pain was resolved by the intervention, restoring the blood to his foot. It has been amazing to see how our practice can really change the clinical condition of our patients.
What is your favorite quote (if you have one)?
I don’t actually have a personal favorite quote, but I will borrow one by Andy Rooney from the editorial of professors Hamadi and McCafferty, “The rocky road to recognizing interventional radiology as a full clinical specialty” (CVIR Endovascular). “I’ve learned that opportunity is never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.” We have the opportunity to make IR grow and be recognized as a clinical discipline and we don’t have to miss it.
Anthony Tadros, MD
What would you say drives your work or inspires you?
Nicholas Barrett Nicholas Barrett Photography (ww
Treating patients with cancer pain has been a major source of inspiration for me. Helping a patient walk again or allowing them to spend quality time with family in their last days is a very impactful experience.
What is your favorite or most meaningful memory/experience as an IR?
One patient stands out: she had metastatic breast cancer with tumor invading her brachial plexus. She had one functional arm that was severely debilitated by pain. No matter the opioid dose, she was in and out of the hospital without any recourse. I performed a stellate nerve block in hopes of settling some of the pain. I'll never forget the phone call the next day. For the first time in months, she was able to cook with her teenage daughter, which was a tremendous consolation to her. She taught me how something seemingly small can be worth so much to someone—this paradigm has since helped guide my practice.
Srini Tummala, MD, FSIR
Why did you choose IR?
Srini Tummala, MD, FSIR
I chose interventional radiology because it is one of the most diverse fields in medicine today. We not only get to diagnose and treat patients but we are at the forefront of innovation and development of new technologies to help patients around the world.
How do you explain your work to non-IRs?
I am a vascular physician who uses the blood vessels as highways to treat various diseases throughout the body.
What would you say drives your work or inspires you?
Training and educating the next generation of vascular experts.
What is your favorite or most meaningful memory/experience as an IR?
Training and working at Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute during an endovascular repair of an infrarenal AAA in the early days using percutaneous access only.
Vincent Vidal, MD, PhD
Why did you choose IR?
Vincent Vidal, MD, PhD
Since my childhood (?), I have always been focused on surgery. During medical school, I thought that the future of surgery was the minimally invasive approach, and that's why my interest came to IR.
How do you explain your work to non-IRs?
Taking care of patients via a small hole.
What would you say drives your work or inspires you?
Bringing new and useful technologies to patients.
What is your favorite or most meaningful memory/experience as an IR?
Bringing IR expertise to emerging countries to treat bleeding.
What is your favorite quote (if you have one)?
"The only way to know how far you can go is to get on the road and walk."—French philosopher Henri Bergson
