Joey Wahler (Host): Its advancements are helping improve patients' surgical experiences. So we're discussing Radiology. Our guest is Dr. Benjamin Stallings. He's Chief of Radiology for Holy Cross Hospital This is Your Best Life Podcast from Holy Cross Health. Thanks for joining us. I'm Joey Wahler. Hi there, Doc. Welcome.

Benjamin Stallings, MD: Hi, how are you?

Host: Good, thanks. Yourself?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: Pretty good. Pretty good.

Host: Excellent. So first, I'm wondering, in a nutshell, what would you say first inspired you to pursue a career in healthcare and specifically eventually in radiology?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: When I went to college, I ran into individuals who were concerned with entering the field of medicine, and they mentioned how competitive it was and by nature, I was very competitive. And once I heard the statistics and odds of actually getting into medical school, that thrilled me and I guess sparked my desire to go into medicine. For me, it was more of a competitive issue, but once I actually daried into the field of medicine, I've been in love with it ever since.

Truly love what I do. Love taking care of patients. Love seeing the smile on their face when you actually do good things. So it's extremely self-rewarding.

Host: Sounds like it. I can hear your passion in your voice. So why specifically radiology?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: When I was in medical school, what I really wanted to do was orthopedic surgery. And my other passion was imaging, which I did a rotation in a medical school in radiology and fell in love with it. And I think it was without a doubt the best move. Sometimes the Lord points you in certain directions and you just have to go against what you want to, but eventually it all works out. And for me, I know that this was the profession for me.

Host: Sounds like it. So how about your journey to becoming Medical Director of the Radiology Department at Holy Cross Hospital? What were some of the things that were key and happening along the way to make that a reality?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: There were some challenges in this system and they reached out to me and I welcomed the challenge and Holy Cross is a wonderful facility. Things that they do. It's a massive enterprise that's focused on really helping patients, making their lives easier. They don't necessarily care about the insurance profitability aspect of it. Their aim is to just do good and that mantra works well with my heart and allows me to roll into this position guns a blazing.

Host: Well, that's great to hear. I'm sure very comforting for people joining us to hear. And so you liked it enough or loved it enough, actually, that it lured you out of retirement, huh?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: It did. My body still making that transition, but I love what I do.

Host: Well, it certainly sounds like it indeed. So with advancements, Doctor in imaging in recent years, there's been a rise in minimally invasive procedures, which are becoming more of the norm now. So how have those radiology guided interventions, would you say, improved recovery times and reduced complications for patients?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: It's a broad range of items in that basket. I'll give you an example. In the past, before many of the advancements in radiology, if someone had say a disease, diverticulitis, inflamed diverticula in the colon, they would immediately go to surgery and it would require two operations where they would go in, create a colostomy, allow the system to calm down, and then they would go back and then reattach the colon.

Now, with minimally invasive radiology, we can put a drainage catheter in the abscess, let the system cool down, and when the time is appropriate, they can go in and do one surgery, just resect the portion they need to, connect the colon back, and the patient doesn't have to go through two operations.

And many times, they won't have to go through any operation, if the antibiotics actually clears everything up. It has great benefit in the space of mammography and neuroimaging. AI has tremendously, and invasive procedures have tremendously changed, the face of medicine through invasive radiology,

Host: Obviously, AI is starting to touch all of our lives more and more. How would you say it's going to affect what you and yours do in radiology over the next several years?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: We're probably in the infancy stages of AI and its involvement in radiology. There's some software out there now where it's already being implemented. But I do see in the future where imaging itself will start to move to the point where there's True 3D imaging, where we get to see an image and kind of open the body ourselves to see what's going on. Right now we have 3D renderings, but not to the extent that I think in the future, there will be true 3D hologram imaging, which will allow us to see disease processes much clearer. But I do think that hologram imaging, is going to play a part in this.

Host: And what is the biggest way in which that would make your job easier and make things better for the patient, would you say?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: It would increase our accuracy. If we had the ability to, let's just say if it were holograms, we would be able to spin a hologram, open it, magnify it, pinch it open, and get better detail. The machines right now, in the old days, there was, I'll use CAT scan, there used to be a single slice

CAT scans, so you would have to take one slice at a time, then it moved to four, then moved to eight, 16, 256, and there are fast machines out there now. With this ability to scan at a faster rate and acquire more data, will allow us to create an image of the body, with much more detail, which will allow us to actually see things with more clarity.

Host: Gotcha. A couple of other things. Despite the advancements you've discussed, there are of course always challenges in what you do. So what are some of the biggest ones you're facing these days in radiology and how are you working to overcome those?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: The biggest challenge right now deals with shortage of radiologists and the increase in actual imaging. The combination of those two creates more of an exponential problem in the sense that with fewer radiologists and more imaging, there is a challenge for practices and hospitals to actually staff appropriately to benefit the patient.

Host: And so when there aren't enough people following in your footsteps, going into the field of radiology, what can be done to change that?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: I think they're expanding some residency programs in radiology, which should increase the number of radiologists coming out. But at the same time, with the help of AI, improving efficiency of radiologists will help stem that need for more radiologists.

If you can increase one physician's productivity by 30 to 40 percent, and you can do that across the board for almost all radiologists, then you're talking about a 40 to 50 percent increase in capacity across the board with all physicians.

Host: Absolutely. What would you say from your experience, Doctor, is the biggest misconception that patients have about radiology? Would it be, for instance, that they think anything will show up on a scan somewhere? What would that be?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: When people hear radiology, they just think x-rays or ultrasounds or MRIs. It includes so many different, from cancer treatments to neuro interventional where you're, you're embolizing aneurysms in the brain to placing stints in the carotid arteries. It's such a vast specialty that for the most part, not many people understand what we do.

Host: So to the point that I made when I asked you that last question, are there still times when things are discovered later on that somehow fell between the cracks in imaging, even with all the advancements you've discussed?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: There are always opportunities for improvement. We like to think that we are efficient and capable of catching and seeing everything. With increased imaging, acquiring images at a much higher efficiency, those

gaps hopefully will close.

Host: And I presume the vast majority of cases, though, generally speaking, things are detected one way or another, right?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: Absolutely. Radiology is a wonderful field. And as I said, that gap that we may be referring to is very small. Throughout the entire body, radiology is, as I see it, the specialty that everyone needs to try to save their lives because when something goes wrong, everyone else can guess what's wrong with their patient. We're the ones that find out what is wrong with their patient.

Host: Interesting. Very well put. So in summary, Doctor, you touched on it earlier, your love for helping people and being part of a culture where you are at Holy Cross Hospital that follows that. What's a great day for you at work? When you come home at the end of the day after seeing patients or whatever the case might be? What makes a productive day in your book?

Benjamin Stallings, MD: A productive day is when something has happened, an unusual case. An example, a patient the other day, had a cecal volvulus. I don't want to go into what that is, but it's something that's very unusual and it's just not seen and when you actually can identify it and make the diagnosis, get the patient to surgery and that patient does well, that makes you feel wonderful. The fact that you have truly made a difference in someone's life, that's what matters.

Host: That's wonderful to hear. Well folks we trust you're now more familiar with the world of radiology. As Dr. Stallings said, it really does touch every branch of medicine. Doc, keep up the great work. It sounds like that divine intervention you referred to earlier did indeed point you in just the right direction. And thanks so much again.

Benjamin Stallings, MD: I appreciate it. Thank you.

Host: And for more information, please visit holycrosshealth.org. If you found this podcast helpful, please do share it on your social media. I'm Joey Wahler, and thanks again for being part of Your Best Life Podcast from Holy Cross Health.