FEATURE
Practical magic Necessity is the mother of IR innovation By Jennifer J. Salopek
D
esign thinking is all the rage these days. It’s “a method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically
feasible and strategically viable way,” according to the Harvard Business Review (June 2008). It often involves setting aside traditional solutions to problems and beginning afresh, without preconceived notions or limiting factors. Lately, design thinking has been used in fields as diverse as health care and bicycle manufacturing. The new Dell Medical School at UT Austin has engaged some of design thinking’s most well-known practitioners, former executives at IDEO, to help re-imagine the crucial intersection of medical education and patient care.
Interventional radiology is design thinking in action. A field known for its
16 IR QUARTERLY | WINTER 2016
inventiveness as it seeks new solutions, IR draws on inspiration from diverse sources. Driven by necessity and urgency, interventional radiologists innovate on the fly and in the moment— or almost. The work of one IR team at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) provides an illuminating example.
About five years ago, the maternal–fetal medicine team at MCW approached their colleagues in interventional radiology with a complex case: Ultrasound showed that an infant in utero, otherwise totally viable, had an anomaly in his lung—a fluid-filled sac that caused swelling in his chest, shifting its structures to the wrong side and preventing his lungs from developing normally. They had attempted needle drainage but the sac just refilled with fluid. The team leader, who had worked
closely with interventional radiologists in the past and understood its capabilities, approached Sean M. Tutton, MD, FSIR, and William S. Rilling, MD, FSIR, to see whether they could help.
It was a good choice. The two are “passionate about ultrasound-guided procedures,” according to Dr. Tutton, who began seeking a new way to drain the fluid collections. The typical approach, a Trocar method catheter mounted on a needle and inserted through the mother’s abdominal wall, was too large. Although it had been used successfully in the past, the potential for complications and infection was high. The need was pressing: “If the fluid issue were not addressed, the condition was 100 percent fatal, even though the fetus was perfectly normal,” Dr. Tutton says.
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