Theresa Caridi, MD, FSIR, Clinical Associate Professor of Interventional Radiology (IR) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), has joined Varian as Medical Director for Varian Interventional Solutions. In this role, Dr. Caridi will bring an academic interventional radiology background to medical affairs and the wider Interventional Solutions team at Varian. Her role will touch upon many functions including clinical research, device evaluation and translation to patient care, medical education, quality assurance, and other physician liaison and leadership functions. She will also help develop educational programs for interventional radiology residents as well as for Varian medical sales teams who must fully understand how physicians use devices and provide onsite support for procedures.
“We are fortunate to have such a talented and visionary physician leader join us here at Varian, in our Interventional Solutions Medical Affairs group,” said David Hahn, MD, Vice President, Interventional Solutions Medical Affairs. “Dr. Caridi is a national/international lecturer, reviewer, and active publisher in clinical research as it relates to interventional procedures and procedural healthcare disparities. Her clinical experience spans the full spectrum of image-guided procedures, and her special interests are similarly wide-ranging, encompassing the minimally invasive treatment of uterine fibroids and other uterine conditions, pelvic venous insufficiency/varicocele, prostate hyperplasia, knee osteoarthritis, and pulmonary arteriovenous malformations.”
“Dr. Caridi brings an impressive academic and clinical background to her new role with us,” said Frank Facchini, President of Varian Interventional Solutions. “In our field, there haven’t been a lot of widely published, clinically experienced physician/researchers taking on senior medical affairs roles in industry, and almost none have been women. She’s a trail blazer, bringing the kind of academic background to help us build our clinical trials program for maximum impact.”
After completing medical school and a residency in diagnostic radiology at the University of Florida, Dr. Caridi completed a fellowship in vascular and interventional radiology at the University of Pennsylvania. That was followed by a 7-year-period of academic faculty practice at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. In 2020, she joined the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to serve as the Division Director for Interventional Radiology and Vice Chair of Interventional Affairs for the Department of Radiology. More recently, she added a secondary appointment as associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UAB, reflecting the degree to which interventional modalities are gaining traction in women’s health and becoming an important approach for treating a variety of gynecological conditions.
Additionally, Dr. Caridi has been an active member of the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR), serving on the executive council for many years, most recently as Chair of the SIR Foundation Board of Directors.
Dr. Caridi realizes that she is joining Varian at a very pivotal time for the company, as its combination with the much larger Siemens Healthineers, now just over two years old, is beginning to bear fruit, especially in the IR space.
“There are a variety of ways and settings in which one can practice interventional radiology because of how minimally invasive it is,” she pointed out. “There’s tremendous opportunity to partner with colleagues in other parts of the Siemens Healthineers organization to ensure that what we develop—the technologies of the future—are feasible for many different practice settings, from a cost standpoint as well as from a usability standpoint.”
Dr. Caridi further notes that, while Varian, prior to its acquisition by Siemens Healthineers, was supporting mostly a cancer treatment device portfolio, interventional radiology has applications for a wide variety of diseases that are incredibly relevant to the Siemens Healthineers expertise in imaging. She is excited to bring her vast experience with interventions in women’s and men’s health into the company. “Embolization, for example, is not just for cancerous tumors. There are a variety of non-malignant growths that are treated successfully with embolization - many of these rival surgical efficacy and have advanced safety as compared to major surgical procedures. Varian is committed to supporting research that demonstrates the viability of interventional approaches, both within oncology and in other medical disciplines,” she said.
“I’m already so impressed with the Interventional Solutions teams at Varian,” Dr. Caridi said. “It’s a distinct group of people who are from all areas of the globe and bring phenomenal expertise in their respective arenas. Who wouldn’t want to work with the best of the best? I love that we’re uniting these diverse perspectives and collectively planting our focus on how we can help advance the field through innovation that really has an impact in the procedure room. Ultimately, we want patients to benefit from greater access to these fast-evolving, image-guided, minimally-invasive treatment approaches.”