Enhancing Education to Avoid Complications in Endovascular Treatment of Unruptured Intracranial Aneurysms: A Neurointerventionalist’s Perspective

Abstract

It is of utmost importance to avoid errors and subsequent complications when performing neurointerventional procedures, particularly when treating low-risk conditions such as unruptured intracranial aneurysms. We used endovascular treatment of unruptured intracranial aneurysms as an example and took a survey-based approach in which we reached out to 233 neurointerventionalists. They were asked what they think are the most important points staff should teach their trainees to avoid errors and subsequent complications in endovascular treatment of unruptured intracranial aneurysms. One hundred twenty-one respondents (51.9%) provided answers in the form of free text responses, which were thematically clustered in an affinity diagram and summarized in this Practice Perspectives. The article is primarily intended for neurointerventional radiology fellows and junior staff and will hopefully provide them the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of their more experienced colleagues.A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.

A clinical perspective on endovascular stroke treatment biomechanics

“…Several studies have evaluated simulation training in the setting of acute ischemic stroke and showed that it is highly effective not only in improving individual technical skills (task training), but also, and perhaps more importantly, in improving teamwork and communication within the medical team (team training) (Kurz et al, 2020). Despite these promising results, simulation training is often encountered with skepticism and still not widely used in the neurointerventional training curriculum, although attitudes of physicians and professional societies are changing in this regard (Goyal et al, 2020a;Ospel et al, 2020).…”