22/05/2026
with Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Mahnken
👋𝐀 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 — 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧-𝐨𝐟𝐟
After a week of posts on Clinical IR, MDTs, innovation, training, and team culture, one thing becomes clear:
Interventional Radiology is not just a specialty - it’s a mindset.🧠 A movement. Sometimes even a bit of a rebellion.
🎶Today’s record recommendation - Radio Ethiopia by Patti Smith - brings that into focus:
Especially the track “Pissing in a River.”
Provocative? Yes.
But also deeply symbolic.
Even 50 years after its release, the song resonates as a metaphor for what IR has been — and, in some ways, still is:
• challenging traditional clinical pathways
• transforming intensity, pressure, and friction into strength
• building identity as an independent clinical discipline
What may appear disruptive from the outside is, in reality, a form of self-empowerment: That’s Interventional Radiology.
𝑊𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑑𝑎𝑝𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑚 — we reshape parts of it, step by step, procedure by procedure, patient by patient.
Over the past days, we talked about:
• clinical ownership
• multidisciplinary collaboration
• the next generation
• innovation and robotics
• building sustainable IR services
📖 All of these are pieces of the same story. A story that is still being written. And now, after this week it´s time for a different kind of intervention. Switching from angio suite to rehearsal room: picking up the E-bass, meeting my music buddy, and turning things loud. Because, in the end, there is something surprisingly similar between music and IR:
🔋Energy. 🎯Precision. ⌚Timing.
There are those rare moments where everything just clicks — whether in a complex intervention or on stage.
Thanks for following along this week – I hope you enjoyed the journey.
So long — and thanks for all the fish.👋
Katholisches Klinikum Bochum
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
