Pediatric Interventional Radiology: From Diagnosis to Mini-Invasive Therapy

Dear Colleagues,

Pediatric interventional radiology (IR) started to gain acceptance during the 1980s, with a significant increase in the clinical application of diagnostic and interventional procedures in children. Similar to other procedures, most of the IR techniques were first developed and widely adopted in adults and therefore translated to pediatric patients.

Especially, babies and children pose several challenges, not only due to the smaller size that entails technical adjustment but also due to the required dedicated peri-procedural care. Moreover, their life expectancy is longer; thus, special attention needs to be paid on ionizing radiation and chemical exposure. The dose of administered iodinated contrast media, alcohol, and other embolic materials must be carefully tailored to the patients’ weight.

Even though techniques mirror those performed in adults with the same methods and materials, new technical developments leading to extremely refined and low-profile devices are needed to minimize invasiveness and the risk of procedural complications. In this regard, devices developed and introduced into clinical practice in coronary and neurovascular interventions are frequently borrowed.

If, on the one hand, procedures such as biopsies and percutaneous drainages are widely accepted and commonly performed in pediatric patients, then, on the other hand, the relatively rare diseases requiring complex IR techniques in children are hindered by the lack of clinical practice guidelines and recommendations, which are often adapted from adult algorithms.

All the above-mentioned issues offer cues for further development in the field of pediatric IR, namely, regarding clinical indications, optimization of diagnostic protocols, and standardization of image-guided interventions.

We invite authors to share their experience, contributing with both original research and review articles in this Special Issue, hoping that it could be a primer for increasing knowledge and promoting research in pediatric IR.

Dr. Paolo Marra
Guest Editor

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