drstrangelove said:
Is there someone who can explain to me the similarities and differences of fields like:
radiology
radiation oncology
neuroradiology
interventional radiology
My initial guess is radiation oncology has nothing to do with imaging, and only zapping tumors. But I don't know how radiology breaks down into specialties, other than maybe diagnostic/interventional, maybe different systems.
Also if you're talking about something like a brain tumor, who handles that?
Primary care to neurologist to radiologist to neuroradiologist to neurosurgeon to radiation oncologist
Once upon a time there was radiology, which included both x-ray related diagnosis and radiation treatment. In the late 60s, 70s and even early 80s, things became more subspecialized and the radiation treatment radiologists broke away (not completely at the national level organizations though) to forms the separate discipline of radiation oncology. There are no ACGME accredited fellowships in radiation oncology. Their main political organization still remains the American College of Radiology and their boards examination is still administered by the American Board of Radiology.
Also some doctors have (since the 60s) specialized in radioactive tracer imaging and more recently treatments and are Nuclear medicine doctors. Nuclear medicine departments are almost always a part of the larger department of radiology, though they do have their own national organizations. There are two ways to do this: Internship plus two years of nuclear medicine residency or Internship+radiologyresidency+one-year nuclear radiology fellowship.
Radiology has become more subspecialized in recent years and there are multiple subspecialties, some organ based and some modality based, sometimes with some overlap. The ACGME accredited fellowship programs include neuroradiology, nuclear radiology, pediatric radiology, interventional radiology, musculoskeletal radiology, and endovascular surgical neuroradiology (alos known as interventional neuroradiology). There are other fellowships in Women's imaging, mammography, body or abdominal imaging, radiology informatics, ultrasound, MRI, thoracic radiology, cardiovascular radiology, etc.
Brain tumor patients (assuming we are talking about primary intra-axial brain neoplasms) are cared for a multidisciplinary team. The main person is a neuro-oncologist (either a neurologist with neuro-oncology training or a hematology-oncology person with possible additional neurooncology training). Other people involved in the care include neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists, neuroradiologists, rehabilitation physicians, oncology nurses, etc.
Patients may enter this system via any of the above people or the patient's primary care physician or neurologist.
