AJR:185, November 2005 1103 AJR 2005; 185:1103–1112 0361–803X/05/1855–1103 © American Roentgen Ray Society Sunshine et al. A Portrait of Interventional Radiologists in the United States The Practice of Radiology  Original Research A Portrait of Interventional Radiologists in the United States Jonathan H. Sunshine 1,2 Rebecca S. Lewis 1 Mythreyi Bhargavan 1 Sunshine JH, Lewis RS, Bhargavan M DOI:10.2214/AJR.05.0237 Received February 11, 2005; accepted without revision February 16, 2005. 1 Research Department, American College of Radiology, 1891 Preston White Dr., Reston, VA 20191. Address correspondence to J. H. Sunshine. 2 Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University, New Haven, CT. OBJECTIVE. In recognition of the emergence of interventional radiology as an important “new component of…radiology,” the objective of our study was to provide an extensive and detailed portrait of interventional radiologists, their professional activities, and the practices in which they work. MATERIALS AND METHODS. We tabulated data from the American College of Ra- diology’s 2003 Survey of Radiologists, a stratified random-sample survey that oversampled in- terventionalists and achieved a 63% response rate with a total of 1,924 responses. Responses were weighted to make them representative of all radiologists in the United States. We com- pared information about interventionalists with that for other radiologists. RESULTS. Depending on the definition of who is an interventionalist, 8.5–11.5% of radi- ologists are interventionalists. By most definitions, only slightly under half of interventionalists spend 70% or more of their clinical work time performing interventional procedures. Interven- tionalists work, on average, 56–58 hr weekly, a few hours longer than other radiologists. The average interventionalist performs procedures in five of the seven categories of procedures into which we divided interventional radiology, compared with one or two categories for other ra- diologists. The average interventionalist performs procedures in five of the seven broad cate- gories (such as MRI, CT, and nuclear medicine) into which we divided all of radiology, much the same breadth of practice as other subspecialists and also as nonsubspecialists. CONCLUSION. Interventionalists have become a sizable group within radiology. They are in some ways like other radiologists and in other ways different, but they do not spend as much of their time in their subspecialty as some assume and, overall, are not as different. nterventional radiology is becom- ing increasingly important within radiology. Perhaps the most prom- inent reflection of this develop- ment was the official recognition of interven- tional radiology as “a new component of the specialty of radiology,” which took place at the 2001 annual meeting of the American College of Radiology (ACR). The ACR, as part of its mission of providing important and useful information to the profes- sions it serves, periodically conducts large- scale, multitopic surveys of the members of these professions and the practices in which they work [1–16]. In response to the growing importance of interventional radiology and the action at the 2001 ACR annual meeting, the ACR’s 2003 Survey of Radiologists was de- signed with a special focus on interventional radiologists. (The 2003 Survey of Radiolo- gists, together with the companion 2003 Sur- vey of Radiation Oncologists, were the first large-scale ACR surveys after the 2001 annual meeting.) The 2003 Survey’s special focus on interventional radiologists consisted of a dou- ble-sized sample of interventional radiologists and a design that included more ways of recog- nizing and defining interventional radiologists than for any other field within radiology. As well, this article, an in-depth portrait of inter- ventional radiologists, is the first full-scale ar- ticle to be produced from the 2003 Survey. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive portrait of interventionalists based on a statistically representative sample drawn from all radiologists in the United States. A 2000–2001 survey by the Society of Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology (now the Society of Interventional Radiology [SIR]) contains a great deal of valuable infor- mation [17], but is focused on the practices in which interventionalists work more than on the interventionalists themselves. Moreover, it is based on SIR membership, meaning it is not as I