SIR 2024
General IR
Hossam A. Zaki, BS
Medical Student
Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Financial relationships: Full list of relationships is listed on the CME information page.
Nasheath Ahmed, BS
Research Associate
Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai
Disclosure information not submitted.
Sabrina Q.R Liew, BS
Medical Student
Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Financial relationships: Full list of relationships is listed on the CME information page.
Helen Zhang, BS (she/her/hers)
Medical Student
Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Financial relationships: Full list of relationships is listed on the CME information page.
Sun-Ho Ahn, MD
Associate Professor of Radiology
Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Disclosure information not submitted.
Interventional radiology (IR) clinical trials are pivotal for advancing medical treatments and enhancing patient care. Understanding the various categories of these trials is essential to pinpoint prevalent research themes and identify underexplored areas.
Materials and Methods:
ClinicalTrials.Gov was queried for all trials using the term “interventional radiology,” yielding 305 trials. Categories were determined using the SIR Areas of Interest. Keywords for each area were generated, and clinical trials were categorized based on these keywords. A second set of categories were generated from the SIR Research priorities. Trials were then grouped similarly. Trials not fitting the predefined groups underwent a different process. Trial information was converted into a TF-IDF (Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency) matrix. KMeans clustering was then applied. The optimal number of clusters was determined using the elbow method. The top terms in each cluster were identified to serve as a general definition. Our findings revealed that the most common IR clinical trial topics were in Interventional Oncology (n=56), Gastrointestinal/Biliary Interventions (n=54), and General IR Procedures (n=42). Conversely, the least researched topics were Transplantation Interventions (n=1), Musculoskeletal/Spine Interventions (n=3), Trauma Interventions (n=5), and Portal Hypertension (n=5). A limited number of studies corresponded with the SIR Research Priorities (n=54). Among these, the most researched were Comparative outcomes for percutaneous treatments of small renal cancers (n=25) and Next-Generation Technologies (n=8). The least researched topics were the Treatment of venous thrombosis with mechanical thrombectomy (n=1) and the Development of a multi-institutional data registry for the study of pediatric procedures (n=2). This study highlights gaps in IR clinical trials, especially in the areas of Transplantation, MSK/Spine, Trauma, and Portal Hypertension. The SIR research priorities also appear underrepresented. These insights can guide researchers in formulating new research trajectories and in resource allocation.
Results:
Conclusion: