Ray Jr CE, Funaki B, eds. Updates in Interventional Radiology 2013. Society of Interventional Radiology; 2013; $130.

This annual publication by the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) serves as a literature review for articles published about interventional radiology (IR) between July 2011 and June 2012. Keeping up-to-date in any field of medicine is a daunting task but is especially difficult in the ever-expanding field of interventional radiology. This 130-page book is broken down into 9 sections: clinic practice, aortic aneurysms, the role of drug eluting stents in peripheral arterial disease, venous thromboembolism, portal hypertension, liver malignancy, pulmonary and renal malignancies, endovascular stroke therapy, and women’s health interventions. Only the penultimate chapter would be of true clinical interest to the pure diagnostic or interventional neuroradiologist.

This 7-page chapter focuses on the recently FDA-cleared retrievable stent used in stroke therapy, the so-called “stentriever,” and a specific proprietary type of retrievable stent, the Solitare device. Five retrospective studies were reviewed; the maximum number of patients in any of the studies was 40. The results were unanimously positive for this new device, showing, among other measures, a faster time to recanalization and higher recanalization rates. Written after the presentation of the results of the SWIFT trial—a prospective, randomized multicenter trial that included 113 patients—at the 2012 International Stroke Conference, this chapter briefly summarized the exciting findings of improved angiographic, clinical, and safety outcomes with the use of this device. However, constraints on the dates that could be included in the literature review and publication deadlines precluded inclusion of the August 2012 Lancet paper of the SWIFT trial as one of the official papers in this chapter’s review. This underscores the difficulty, even with such a useful aide like this book, in keeping up with the latest advances in a rapidly growing field.

This book would be useful for anyone who wants to have a quick and streamlined way to keep up with recent updates in IR. However, as described above, the neuro-intervention section is already, unfortunately, out of date.