The Interventional Radiology department offers you the entire spectrum of modern minimally invasive therapy. Our range of services extends from vascular and hepato-biliary interventions to oncological therapies and complex focused therapeutic embolisation of vascular malformations in adults and children. We also offer the gentle implantation of peripheral ports on the forearm for the application of systemic chemotherapies. An important aspect is the development of new interventions.

The Section for Interventional Radiology offers the best possible patient treatment and the greatest possible efficiency in close cooperation with several clinics (e.g. vascular surgery, nuclear medicine, internal medicine and surgery) as well as several centres at our university hospital, such as the Intestinal Centre, Sarcoma Centre and Breast Centre.

Our range of services:

• Angiographic vascular diagnostics of arterial and venous vessels.
• Recanalising / vasodilating procedures: percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA), endovascular prosthesis and stent implantation, local fibrinolysis, mechanical thrombectomy
• Occluding / vasoconstrictive procedures: Embolisation for gastrointestinal and/or postoperative bleeding, reduction of tumour vascularisation preoperatively, embolisation/occlusion to eliminate vascular lesions, aneurysms, fistulas, AV malformations (abdomen/pelvis, lung, kidney), embolisation of symptomatic uterine fibroids

Special procedures:

• Selective internal radioembolisation (SIRT) for primary and secondary liver tumours in collaboration with the Department of Nuclear Medicine
• Transarterial chemoembolisation (TACE) for primary and secondary liver tumours
• Intra-arterial port placement for secondary liver tumours, pancreatic tumours, gynaecological and urological tumours
• Peripheral venous port placement
• Sonographically guided transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPSS) placement (for oesophageal variceal bleeding, refractory ascites).
• Transjugular liver biopsy
• Vena cava filter implantation (for pulmonary embolism due to deep vein thrombosis)
• Percutaneous transvascular foreign body extraction (cath fragments, electrode residues, etc.)
• Hormone blood sampling (parathyroid hormone, cortisol, ACTH, renin/angiotensin, insulin)

Image-guided interventions:

• CT-guided radiofrequency ablation (RFA)
• Percutaneous thermal ablation of tumorous lesions (metastases in the liver, lungs and other soft tissue processes).
• Percutaneous thermal ablation of osteoid osteomas
• Percutaneous punctures (punch biopsy)
• Percutaneous drainage of fluid behaviour (pleural drainage, biliomas, abscesses of various localisations)
• Bile duct drainage (PTCD) with external or internal drainage
• Percutaneous nephrostomy
• Periradicular therapy (PRT).
• Facet joint blockade
• Lumbar / thoracic elimination of the sympathetic plexus (pAVK)
• Ganglion blockades (coeliac plexus, stellate ganglion)

Importance of interventional radiology and minimally invasive therapy:

Minimally invasive interventional radiology is an excellent complement to other surgical and non-surgical procedures for your benefit. In micro-therapeutic interventions, state-of-the-art diagnostics are used to visualise the inside of the body and the diseases in order to then introduce the finest tools in real-time imaging and, if necessary, to observe the therapeutic effect simultaneously. From this description it is easy to see that the rapid advances in imaging in recent years have also led to impressive growth in the possibilities of microtherapy. The clinically applicable procedures are listed in our range of services. It is important to note that the interventions are generally not to be considered in isolation, but are integrated into holistic, interdisciplinary concepts. The simplest guarantee for this is the positioning of our clinic in various centres of the University Hospital Ulm.