Our News

New, state of the art technology has been installed in the Interventional Radiology (IR) Suite at Peterborough City Hospital, helping to enhance the care provided to our patients. Thanks to this new technology, procedures will be quicker and less invasive for our patients. 

Charlotte Macianskis, Interventional Section Head at Peterborough City Hospital, explains how the equipment will enhance the care we provide patients.

“Theatre 13 is our IR Suite, a part of the diagnostic imaging department, and is located in theatres. The team undertake a range of procedures in theatre, such as biopsies, nephrostomies (aiding in draining of the kidney), angioplasties (unblocking of narrowed blood vessels) and many more important and urgent procedures that require the assistance of technology.

“For example, during an angioplasty the Radiologist will give the patient x-ray contrast dye into their blood vessels, and the imaging kit will use x-rays to produce images of the arteries and vessels within the body. The kit can then use specialist functions to create roadmaps of the blood vessels to aid in the patient’s treatment. This aids in the patient’s procedure by identifying small and complex vessels and guiding the Radiologist, thus reducing the patient’s procedure time.”

Interventional Radiology is sometimes referred to as Image Guided Surgery as we use the latest imaging technology to look inside patients and perform minimally invasive procedures. It is commonly confused with key-hole surgery but in fact the holes we make in IR are even smaller than key-hole surgery. The vast majority of procedures can be performed under local anaesthetic or sedation with only a very few complex cases requiring a general anaesthetic.

“Over the last 5 years our workload has steeply increased by 20% to meet the demands of the service, 723 Interventional procedures were booked in the Interventional Theatre in 2023.

“This new technology is one of the first of its kind to be installed in the UK and is highly praised for its performance in both image quality and low procedural doses”. This aids in the outcome for patients as it means their procedure will require less screening time and the new technology will assist the Radiologist in the most complex of cases.

During the installation of the new kit Charlotte, her fellow Interventional Head Claire Bezkorowajnyj and the wider team of Radiologists, Radiographers, Nurses and Healthcare Assistants have worked hard to ensure an emergency service was still provided for our patients.