The Legends: An Interview with Dr. Kathy Krol

We begin by discussing how Dr. Krol entered the field of radiology and subsequently became involved in special procedures in radiology, before the beginning of interventional radiology. At the time, there was only a 7 French stiff wire, a J wire, or a straight wire. She recalls how the introduction of two key instruments, the glide wire, and the stent, changed the entire practice and scope of the types of interventions radiologists could do.

Next, Dr. Krol talks about her involvement with SIR (Society of Interventional Radiology). She first joined a meeting at a hotel in San Francisco, where she was the only woman in the room, and repeatedly mistaken for a nurse. At the time, the society had recently allowed women to join, and since joining, she has never missed a SIR annual business meeting. During her time as the president of SIR, in 2006, some of the main issues were preserving IR as its own field among vascular surgery and interventional cardiology, forming an independent IR residency, and forming the idea of the outpatient-based lab (OBL) as a new space for IRs to work in.

Dr. Krol shares stories of her struggles as a woman in IR as well as in leadership positions. She began in radiology, where she had to work hard to learn procedures, and then even harder to prove to colleagues that she was capable. She was often mistaken for a tech or a nurse and resorted to wearing suits instead of dresses while in the IR suite performing procedures. She often had to take whatever role was given, but she used this to her advantage. One such instance is when she wanted to volunteer for SIR, they put her in coding and billing which was not her interest. She turned this around and became so invested in it that she has now helped create nearly all the CPT codes that exist for IR today.