Snapshot Surveys

 Nadir Khan, Ali Zafar and James Harding on behalf of the Audit and Registry Committee of the British Society of Interventional Radiology

The BSIR Annual Snapshot Survey serves to gain an insight into current IR practice within the UK. The Spring 2021 survey asked about changes to working patterns due to the pandemic and any protective factors within individual IR departments. An online questionnaire was sent out via email to BSIR members in February 2021. There were 49 responses in total, from a range of institutions and from consultants with both pure IR and mixed IR and diagnostic job plans.

The overall impact of the pandemic on workload in the majority of departments was either a decreased workload (19/49) or the same volume of work, but different types of case (20/49). There were more urgent cases, with a focus on vascular access, thrombolysis and non-vascular intervention. Cases took longer due to infection control precautions causing slower flow. Non-cancer IR (eg EVAR, UAE and PAE) was stopped, or occurred at a muchreduced rate.

Many departments lost access to vital resources, such as hybrid theatres (7/16), admitting rights (4/16) and day case beds (14/23). Staff were lost due to sickness (35/49) and redeployment (6/49 medical staff and 22/49 nursing and other staff). Many departments also lost non-IR resources, such as anaesthetic support (26/49), access to theatre (19/49) and ITU beds (25/49). More than half of the responses indicated that having dedicated day case beds was a protective factor which enabled the service to continue to run (29/49).

Whilst the pandemic had variable effects in different departments, most saw a significant change or reduction in workload. Access to dedicated IR day case beds was the most important factor protecting local services.

Victoria Burrows

Dr Chris Hammond