What is IO?
 

Interventional radiology, or IR, has been moving over the years into actively treating both primary and advanced cancers, such that it now seems to have a branch being referred to interventional oncology, or IO.

I had an RFA of my lung met in 2008, which was an IR procedure ... or I guess I should now say, an IO procedure.

Penny and PAM just had RFAs of their liver mets. Others on our site have had cryoablation of liver mets, which is freezing the tumor, rather than burning it. Memorial Sloan Kettering is running a trial on using cryoablation to kill primary breast cancer tumors, rather than removing them surgically: http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01502592

IR gives some of us options.

Here is a website on IO, called IO Central: http://www.io-central.org/

And some well-known IR docs heading up IO Central: http://www.io-central.org/p/cm/ld/fid=54

Joan