Standards of Practice

Standards of Practice - PDF documents

In the current era of ever increasing encroachment on our speciality by covetous clinical specialities, it has become increasingly evident that the responsibilities of a large scientific society like CIRSE cannot be confined to the organisation of scientific meetings and congresses. We also have to define our role as a professional interest group and the position of Interventional Radiology within medicine as a whole.

Evidence-based medicine has become an important criterion in reimbursement policy and in experimental and clinical research planning. CIRSE must take the lead in producing quality assurance guidelines for clinical practice based on the published evidence. The Standards of Practice (SOP) Committee was created to address these issues. The aim of the SOP Committee is to produce evidence-based guidelines for interventional radiologists to enable the standardisation of practice for interventional procedures across Europe.

Quality Assurance (QA) guidelines attempt to define principles that should assist in producing high quality care. They are obtained by analysing the data available in the scientific literature. Other sources of information may be used in conjunction with these principles to produce high quality medical care, which is our ultimate goal.

These standards or QA guidelines may take the form of one of three types. They may be documents which have been adapted from previous Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) guidelines; they may be new guidelines produced by CIRSE or they may be new documents produced as joint ventures between CIRSE and SIR Members.

The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) has already done extensive work in the United States on this subject and published the resulting documents in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology. It was decided that CIRSE should review the standards set by the SIR and, when possible, adapt them for European interventionalists. CIRSE is most grateful to SIR, for the permission to use their data. This will be done when applicable, taking into account the methods of practice of Interventional Radiology in Europe.

SOP Documents

• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Portal Vein Embolization

• Occupational radiation protection for interventionalists
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Radiofrequency Ablation of Liver Tumours
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Percutaneous Inferior Vena Cava Filter Placement for the Prevention of Pulmonary Embolism
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Percutaneous Transhepatic Cholangiography and Biliary Drainage
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Stenting in Infrainguinal Arterial Disease
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Uterine Artery Embolisation for Symptomatic Leiomyomata
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Percutaneous Nephrostomies
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Placement of Oesophageal Stents
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Percutaneous Vertebroplasty
  
  
• Quality Assurance Guidelines for Superior Vena Cava Stenting in Malignant Disease
  
  
• Quality Assurance Guidelines for the Endovascular treatment of Occlusive Lesions of the Subclavian and Innominate Arteries
  
  
• Quality Assurance Guidelines for the Performance of Carotid Stenting
  
  
• Quality Assurance Guidelnines for Placement of Gastroduodenal Stents
  
  
• Quality Improvement Guidelines for Endovascular Treatment of Iliac Artery Occlusive Disease
  
  
• Standards for the Endovascular Management of Aortic Occlusive Disease
  
  
• Patient Radiation Dose Management
  (© 2009, Society of Interventional Radiology. All rights reserved.)
  
  
• Periprocedural Management of Coagulation Status and Hemostasis Risk in Percutaneous Image-guided Interventions 
  (© 2009, Society of Interventional Radiology. All rights reserved.)
  
  
• Treatment of Lower Extremity Superficial Venous Insufficiency with Ambulatory Phlebectomy 
  (© 2009, Society of Interventional Radiology. All rights reserved.)
  
  
• Treatment of Lowerextremity Superficial Venous Insufficiency with Endovenous Thermal Ablation
  (© 2009, Society of Interventional Radiology. All rights reserved.)
  
  
• Guidelines for Peripheral and Visceral Vascular Embolization Training
  (© 2009, Society of Interventional Radiology. All rights reserved.)
  
  

Other documents are under evaluation and will be posted on the website in due course.
The creation of these documents requires extensive work, which also involves a careful evaluation of the literature. Therefore, if CIRSE is to produce high quality standards based on evidence-based guidelines for the majority of mainstream interventional procedures, the cooperation of many CIRSE members will be required. If you are interested in collaborating with the Standards of Practice Committee to produce further documents, please contact the CIRSE Central Office at info@cirse.org.