Matthew Herp
At the Sunday plenary session, Thomas A. Sos, MD, FSIR, accepted the 2023 SIR Leaders in Innovation award. This award recognizes and promotes innovation within interventional radiology, continuing IR’s historical innovative development that has revolutionized medicine over the last 40 years. The award acknowledges individuals who have conceptualized and implemented an idea that has had an advantageous impact on the practice of interventional radiology.
Dr. Sos, who is widely regarded as one of the world’s top authorities in renal angioplasty and stenting and a pioneer of minimally invasive peripheral artery disease treatments, has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed papers, served as the SIR president in 1986, and holds more than 14 patents.
Read Dr. Sos’s acceptance speech below.
“Thank you, SIR Foundation for this great honor. I’m honored to be included with past great recipients of this award. I want to really thank my wife and son for their unconditional love and support. Thank you to SIR, thank you to my friends, colleagues, nurses, technologists, teachers, students, residents and fellows, and industry for your support, encouragement and probing questions which helped and spurred me on to develop some of my ideas. And thank you for occasionally bailing me and our patients out of any trouble I may have tried to get us into.
“There is a misconception that innovation is somehow the province of geniuses like Einstein and rocket scientists. I want to put this to rest. I think it’s very important for all of you, especially the young IRs in the audience, to understand that when you do a procedure and for whatever reason the device doesn’t work as it’s meant to—that is often perceived as a disappointment or problem. It’s not. It is an incredible opportunity. It’s an opportunity for you—every single one of you, whether in a small community hospital or a large institution—to figure out what went wrong or why it didn’t work. Then you can replace it, innovate it, invent a new product and idea. Then you have become an innovator and an inventor.
“It is harder work than it sounds. While it does take a long time and there are disappointments that come along, I assure you that it is a wonderful feeling, to see one of my catheters used on imaging that is sent from the other end of the world.
“I want us to also remember the quote often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, though it was first spoken by an English pastor: It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. And that’s what you as innovators will do. And to coin a phrase, you will innovate, make changes, and make IR great again and again and again.”
Be sure to watch this plenary and other SIR 2023 sessions via SIR 2023 On-demand.
