Minimally invasive interventional medicine is an independent discipline based on diagnostic radiology and aimed at treatment, which can both diagnose and treat. It has completely changed the traditional concept that radiology is only diagnostic but not therapeutic, and its wide application has changed many traditional treatment modes, and has become the most active, vibrant and promising discipline in modern medicine.
With the continuous development of science and technology, minimally invasive interventional therapy is the foundation on which ultrasound intervention, CT intervention, MR intervention, etc. have been derived, and now a broader discipline of minimally invasive interventional medicine is being formed, becoming the third major clinical discipline after internal medicine and surgery.
Features of minimally invasive interventional therapy:
Minimally invasive interventional therapy generally has the advantages of safety and reliability, no incision, little damage, no traces on the body surface, little pain and easy acceptance by patients, wide range of indications without absolute contraindications, short course of treatment, fast results, significant efficacy, repeatability, does not affect other treatment means, no morphological damage to human tissues and organs, and preservation of normal functions.
The catheter that leads to life
Since the 1980s, the word “interventional” has appeared more and more frequently in clinical medicine, allowing people to gain insight into the many changes that occur in the blood vessels, and to diagnose and treat many diseases, involving all systems and organs of the body, through catheters that follow the blood vessels into various parts of the body without open surgery. The vast majority of these catheters are used, so they are called life-giving catheters, and they are mainly used to achieve various treatments by “pass, block, inject and take”. With the introduction of minimally invasive interventional therapy, the outstanding problems solved are.
The incurable diseases in the past have become curable diseases now, such as thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysms.
Previously untreatable diseases are now treatable, such as thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysms, which can be solved by interventional treatment, such as cerebrovascular disease.
Interventional treatment has become simple and easy when conventional treatment is extremely risky, such as congenital heart disease.
Conventional drug treatment has little effect, but interventional treatment can have an immediate effect, such as various hemorrhages.
Surgery without incision
When people think of surgery, the first thing that comes to mind is traditional surgery, while very few people think of minimally invasive interventional surgery or even know much about it. This is natural, as the former has a long history and mature technology, and has made great contributions, and will do so in the future. The latter, however, is an emerging fringe discipline with a short history of clinical application, but is growing rapidly and playing an extremely important role in clinical treatment, and is increasingly being highly valued by the medical community and recognized by society and trusted by patients.
The advantages of minimally invasive interventional surgery are: no incision is made, and only tiny instruments are used to reach the lesion and perform various treatments such as drug infusion and embolization, as well as forming surgery and stent placement through the human physiological pipeline. The treatment can be carried out at the same time as diagnosis, and effective treatment can be achieved by avoiding blindness. In this way, the traditional technology faces the challenge of modern high technology, which is both a progress and a blessing to patients. The partial replacement of traditional or obsolete treatment measures by new technologies and therapies is an inevitable law of scientific and technological development.
Minimally invasive interventional treatment is one of the cases, such as disc herniation, vertebral compression fracture, vertebral tumor, ischemic necrosis of femoral head, etc.
”Stenting for “blocked pipes
There are many “ducts” in the human body, and we are not unfamiliar with them, such as the digestive tract (esophagus, stomach, intestines, bile ducts, etc.), trachea, urethra, arteries and veins (coronary arteries, thoracoabdominal aorta, renal arteries, upper and lower vena cava), etc. In minimally invasive interventions, the above “ducts” are divided into two categories, i.e., the former is non-vascular and the latter is vascular. When these “pipelines” are narrowed and occluded due to congenital or acquired diseases, they can be treated by minimally invasive intervention – endoluminal stenting.
Under the guidance of imaging equipment, the stent is placed in the narrowed lumen and naturally expands to unblock the narrowed or occluded “pipe” and restore the original function, thus achieving the treatment purpose.
So what exactly is a stent, lay people do not know about it. Endoluminal stent is a kind of prosthesis made of polymer medical metal or polymer material that can stay in the human body cavity for a long time or temporarily, and this kind of prosthesis is called stent, and the stent is released by minimally invasive interventional treatment means with the placement device for the treatment of vascular and non-vascular stenosis or occlusive disease, which is called endoluminal stent treatment.
Especially in recent years, this treatment technology has made a breakthrough in terms of clinical efficacy and application scope, as well as in the development of new types of endoluminal stents and the application of new technologies, and has shown the unique advantages and good application prospects of minimally invasive interventional treatment.
Interventional surgery for organ preservation
In the past, conventional surgical treatment involves partial or total removal of tissues and organs, which is well known. However, for interventional procedures that can preserve organs, in addition to the advantages of minimally invasive, simple, less painful for patients and fast results, almost all minimally invasive interventional procedures have no morphological damage to organs, so that the functions of the original organs can be preserved to the maximum extent. Minimally invasive intervention is a new technology that can cure the disease and preserve the organ at the same time. It is now commonly used in clinical practice with satisfactory results and is well accepted by patients.
Advantages of minimally invasive interventional surgery
Through minimally invasive interventional surgery, the following unique advantages of interventional treatment are highlighted.
1. Satisfying the patient’s greatest wish. For example, a young woman who has not yet given birth has multiple uterine fibroids and is currently bleeding heavily, which cannot be seen even after symptomatic and pharmacological treatment. In this case, the only traditional treatment is surgical removal. Once the uterus is removed, she will lose her natural fertility for life, yet the patient’s greatest wish is to preserve her fertility.
At this point, minimally invasive interventions can create the prerequisites for the patient to achieve this wish. Likewise, for even patients without fertility requirements, interventional treatment of uterine fibroids is one of the primary treatment options because it is non-invasive, less painful and quicker to recover.
2. Radical treatment. Minimally invasive interventional therapy can achieve radical treatment for many diseases, especially for those diseases that lacked effective treatment means in the past and for those with more invasive treatment methods, minimally invasive interventional therapy shows its great superiority, such as cerebral aneurysm, arteriovenous malformation arteriovenous fistula, etc.
3. The best treatment of choice. With the rapid development of interventional medicine, the interventional procedures continue to mature and improve, so that in clinical treatment, for some diseases basically replaced the traditional means of treatment as the preferred treatment method, especially in the past that many diseases are not treated or difficult to treat, but minimally invasive interventional therapy to obtain satisfactory results, such as a variety of brain, spinal arteriovenous disease, carotid cavernous sinus fistula, aortitis caused by multiple vascular Stenosis, interventional treatment has become the preferred treatment for these diseases, and is relatively safe and reliable.
4.Palliative treatment. Palliative treatment is mainly applied to patients with various kinds of advanced cancers, and it is one of the most widely used effective treatment measures at present. It can significantly improve the quality of patients’ survival, prolong survival time, and reduce medical pain, etc., which have shown incomparable uniqueness and are accepted by more and more patients.
Interventional therapy and emergency resuscitation
Emergency medicine is an interdisciplinary and comprehensive discipline, and in the past, emergency care in this discipline was mainly performed by clinical departments. Currently, interventional techniques have been applied in the field of emergency medicine and are playing an increasingly important role. The advantages of interventional therapy, such as quick, easy, minimally invasive and high efficiency, show its unique advantages, and this technology has both diagnostic and therapeutic functions, so that patients with acute diseases can be diagnosed and treated quickly.
Although minimally invasive interventional therapy for acute diseases is still in its young start-up stage in China, its unique therapeutic effects have shown unlimited potential and vitality, and some techniques have reached the world advanced level, and some techniques are comparable to surgery or have the tendency to replace traditional surgery. It will become one of the important treatment means of modern emergency medicine.
It is mainly used for all kinds of acute hemorrhage, such as hemoptysis, vomiting, nasal bleeding, obstetrical and gynecological hemorrhage, traumatic hemorrhage, etc. These hemorrhages stop immediately after interventional treatment. Secondly, emergency stenting can be used to treat gastrointestinal obstruction, distal large intestine obstruction, as well as esophagotracheal fistula and tracheal stenosis.
At present, minimally invasive interventional therapy has passed the initial stage of development and is now relatively mature, showing extraordinary potential. For example, hypersplenism is no longer treated by traditional surgical resection, but by interventional therapy to achieve “endoscopic splenectomy”, which is more effective and has become the best recognized treatment.