Imaging-guided Therapeutic Percutaneous Procedures

Abstract

Patients treated for hematological malignancies almost always suffer from pain and disability late in the course of their disease. Over the past few years, imaging-guided percutaneous procedures have become useful for providing short, and sometimes long-term, pain relief, as well as bone strengthening. Patient selection is essential to the success of these techniques. Thus, the interventional radiologist should play an active central role in minimally invasive management of pain in patients treated for hematological malignancies, and should be part of an interdisciplinary team that determines the appropriate therapy (Gangi et al. 1998). Indeed, the choice between a therapeutic percutaneous procedure and alternative methods of treatment depends on several factors: the location of the lesion, the local and general extent of the disease, the pain and functional disability experienced by the patient, and the patient’s state of health and life expectancy (Cotten et al. 1999). In this chapter, we will primarily, and most importantly, focus on the cementoplasty technique and give secondarily some details about ethanol injection in bone osteolytic lesions.