What drew you to IR?
Robert Lewandowski, MD, FSIR: While I envisioned becoming an orthopedic surgeon, I remained open-minded in medical school. During my surgical internship, my path intersected with IR. At that time, IRs were collaborating with vascular surgeons to develop endovascular treatments for patients with arterial diseases. I was drawn by the elegant, image-guided, minimally invasive alternatives to traditional open surgical treatments. This experience convinced me to evaluate interventional radiology as a career, a specialty I was not exposed to during medical school. I quickly became passionate about the potential benefits of minimally invasive, image-guided procedures for patients and their families. My decision was cemented through my early interactions with the interventional radiology community; I was taken in by the innovative and collegial nature of those practicing IR.
Tell us about your career. What led to your interest in interventional oncology?
RL: While I began my radiology training with an interest in peripheral arterial disease, I quickly connected with Riad Salem, MD, MBA, FSIR, who was starting an interventional oncology program at my institution, William Beaumont Hospital (Royal Oak, MI). Through training and research opportunities, my focus shifted to interventional oncology. My area of specialization within interventional oncology is radioembolization, a procedure in which isotope-eluting microspheres are delivered through the hepatic arteries perfusing liver tumors. This has evolved into a broader interest in cancer therapies as part of a multidiscipline care team. That said, I enjoy everything we do as a specialty—interacting with patients and physicians across most medical disciplines. IR is an innovative, rapidly changing and collaborative specialty.
How did you get involved with SIR?
RL: I have been involved with SIR for much of my career, and I have grown to believe that if we want to have a strong, healthy specialty, we need to have a strong volunteer network to support our society. I became more invested in SIR in 2014 when I was invited to join the Annual Meeting Committee (AMC), a 4-year commitment tasked with developing the structure and agenda of our annual scientific meeting, the premiere event of our society attracting over 5,000 attendees. I was chair of the SIR 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington, D.C. This experience on the AMC allowed me to collaborate with colleagues across the country, SIR staff, industry partners and other physician volunteers. I was struck by the talent and passion that exists within our specialty and society. When my time on the AMC ended, I sought other volunteer opportunities within SIR, which has led me to my current position.
As SIR president, what will be your main priorities for next year?
RL: I think it is important to clarify that being the society’s president isn’t truly a 1-year experience. Rather, it’s a 4-year commitment, starting as secretary. This provides consistency to the ongoing priorities, which are a collaboration between the secretary, president-elect, president and immediate past president, with the focus being a commitment to serving all SIR members. Over the next year, we will be striving to move our specialty forward in a unified manner, pursuing the transition from a procedural discipline to a clinical specialty providing image-guided procedures and therapies within the context of longitudinal patient care.
What do you think is currently one of the greatest challenges facing IR and how can SIR and SIR Foundation address it?
RL: We are still a newer medical specialty, and one of our challenges is to keep moving forward, expanding into a clinical specialty focused on the longitudinal care of our patients. To do this, we need the support of SIR and SIR Foundation to provide resources and education for trainees and IR members, to help demonstrate the value of interventional radiology and to advocate for the acceptance and reimbursement of minimally invasive, image-guided therapies, and to facilitate the collection of evidence required to support our practices.
We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of the SIR. There have been incredibly impactful accomplishments during the last 50 years, such as the primary specialty designation and the IR Residency. What do you think is the next opportunity that the SIR and IR should be striving toward?
RL: The 50th anniversary of SIR is a huge milestone, with many accomplishments to celebrate and many opportunities to explore. To pick just one such opportunity, I believe SIR should strive toward creating subspecialty training to facilitate our members becoming disease-specific multidiscipline team members and leaders. This message of the natural evolution of our specialty was elegantly delivered through Dr. William Rilling’s Dotter Lecture at the 2023 SIR Annual Scientific Meeting, and it mirrors our new governance structure with domain-specific clinical specialty councils (CSCs) having significant input into our strategic mission.
What are you most excited about as you enter your presidency?
RL: As I enter my presidency, I'm most excited to continue my work with colleagues and friends, pursuing opportunities for the SIR to empower SIR members to positively impact patients’ lives through image-guided procedures. My vision is that one day, all patients in every corner of the globe will have knowledge of and access to our image-guided therapies.