Musculoskeletal pain is a leading cause of disability among aging patients in the U.S. Many with chronic pain are unable to get adequate relief from traditional pharmacologic therapies. Others may not be able to take them due to age or comorbidities. Attention has turned to embolotherapy as a safe and minimally invasive procedure to treat MSK pain. 

In fact, one of the top needs expressed by the GEST member community is a need for education on how embolotherapy can be used to treat MSK pain.  While the GEST 2022 conference and the GEST 23 MSK meeting addressed this need through multiple standing room only sessions, the eagerness to understand more about this area along with a multidisciplinary approach needed to treat patients successfully is growing. 

Leading IR physicians need a stepwise approach to not just understand how these procedures are done, but also need mentoring while scaling up their practice.  They are looking to learn from multiple platforms/venues including webinars, masterclasses, hands-on meetings, demos, in-hospital training, focused learning days, Q&A interactions with experts, online communities, and tips and tricks to succeed.

Those who have performed these procedures confess that their experience is focused on Genicular Artery Embolization (GAE), Frozen Shoulder, and Epicondylitis.

Leading experts in this emerging field opine that while IR experts know about techniques, they need to approach the use of MSK with a multidisciplinary approach in mind.  Specifically, while IRs have performed parallel procedures in PAE, uterine fibroids, liver, cancer and more, there are many nuances to the clinical examination and prognosis of MSK patients which needs learning.  These experts agree that the growth in this space can be explosive over the next five to ten years leading to a tremendous untapped opportunity for growth for the IR community.

According to Dr. Sid Padia, one of the leading practitioners in this field, “There is a fair amount of experience such as trans arterial embolization from a technical perspective since it is similar to embolization in other parts of the body.  But the clinical knowledge is missing – how to examine a patient, how to diagnose, how to determine if the patient is right for a procedure”. 

The poster below presents a quick snapshot of what we learned from physicians attending the inaugural GEST MSK meeting held in Paris in January 2023.