Trends and implications of 24/7 interventional radiology in a newly opened acute hospital

We aim to evaluate the frequency of use and changing practices for all out-of-hours interventional radiology (IR) procedures performed in a new hospital.

This is a 5 year retrospective review of all out-of-hours procedures performed by the Interventional Radiology team from July 2010 to June 2015. Number and category of procedures performed were identified from the RIS database.

Of the 7140 procedures performed by IR over the 5 years, 764 were out-of-hours. The total number of out-of-hours cases performed annually by IR has increased by 240% from year 1 to year 5. The variety and distribution of out-of-hours work has shown a characteristic trend with rising requests for advanced procedures such as active haemorrhage control.

The rising number and complexity of cases for on-call IR further supports the need for a formal on-call rota, ideally 1:6, to provide a sustainable 24/7 service and optimize patient outcome in an acute hospital.