Changes in Procedure Times for Interventional Radiology Attendings Post-fellowship: What are the Learning Curves for...

To quantify changes in procedure times for interventional radiology (IR) attendings post-fellowship.

Between 8/2010 and 12/2023, we examined 67943 procedures across 269 procedures for 24 IR attendings post-fellowship at a tertiary teaching hospital. Procedure time and months of attending practice were collected to create procedure time learning curves for individual procedures. Procedure times at 1 year and 6-12 years of practice were compared using student's t-test. To create an aggregate learning curve across all procedures, a normalized procedure time (NPT) was calculated by subtracting a faculty's median career procedure time from their individual procedure times across periods of attending practice.

Sirsphere treatment showed the greatest reduction in procedure time between 1 and 6-12 years of practice (232 vs 155 mins, p<0.001), followed by soft tissue ablation (173 vs 120 mins, p<0.001), mapping arteriogram (216 vs 164 mins, p<0.001), embolization tumor hepatic (229 vs 185 mins, p<0.001), bone marrow aspiration (75 vs 50 mins, p<0.001), nephrostomy exchange (71 vs 53 mins, p<0.001) and pleurx catheter placement (87 vs 71 mins, p<0.001). The aggregate IR procedure time learning curve showed decreasing NPT in year 1 (-5.3 mins/procedure/year, p< 0.19), followed by slower steady significantly decreasing NPT between 1 and 6-12 years of practice (-0.7 mins/procedure/year, p<0.0001).

During the first year of practice post-fellowship, IR attendings have the greatest reduction in procedure times for locoregional cancer treatments. Aggregating all procedures during the first 12 years post-fellowship, IR attendings demonstrate a biphasic learning curve.