Bringing cutting-edge medical services to one of the poorest parts of the United States has its challenges. But as radiologist Jason R. Williams, MD, is finding, the rewards can be just as great.

 

"There are a lot of interesting cases, and the patients here are very nice and thankful," said Williams, who joined the staff of Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale in the fall of 2007.

 

"I think people in the Delta are used to having to be sent to Memphis and Jackson," he said. "So when you can treat them here at home — give them as good or better care than what they would get in major cities — that's a big deal."

 

What's an even bigger deal is when one can not only keep patients from being sent away but also bring in patients from far outside the region. But Williams' pioneering work in radiofrequency ablation has done just that, leading patients from as far as California and Canada to seek out his services.

 

"I think a lot of local people stay skeptical," he said. "They don't expect that kind of care here, so it's taken me a while to try to build up relationships where people know what we can do.

 

"It's just automatic to send patients out, but more and more doctors are realizing all the things we can do right here."

 

There's a wide range of applications that fall into the newest techniques of interventional radiology. Just as image-guided procedures have been redefining specialties like orthopedics and cardiology, the practitioners who've made imaging itself their primary focus are steadily expanding the way it's used to diagnose and treat patients.

 

"Before, people always thought radiologists were the ones who read CT scans and MRIs," Williams said. "But today, we're doing a lot of procedures that previously would have been done through surgery."

 

In Williams' case, that includes eliminating cancerous tumors, opening up peripheral blood vessels and even treating varicose veins. Pain management applications in radiology include treating a herniated disk without surgery, as well as image-guided injections that deliver treatments directly to the point of pain.

 

Williams received training in cutting-edge imaging techniques during his residency in radiology at the University of South Alabama.

 

"Particularly when we first started doing it back in 2002, it was really new and there were not a lot of people doing it," he said.

 

In the midst of residency training, Williams was granted a leave of absence to focus on the image-guided treatment of cancer for two years. During that time, he founded the first center specializing in the minimally invasive treatment of cancer, specializing in image-guided cryoablation and radiofrequency ablation.

 

Based in Gulf Shores, Ala., he performed more than 400 ablation procedures on patients from around the world, including traveling to South Africa to perform the first lung ablation on the continent.

 

Williams has focused on RFA for treatment of primarily lung and liver cancers.

 

The technique involves using CT imaging to guide the placement of a hollow needle into a tumor. Metal tines pass through the needle and envelop the tumor. Then radio waves transmitted to the needle tip heat the tumor up to destroy it, sparing the surrounding tissues.

 

Williams has also been the first in the area to perform microwave ablation procedures.

 

Since opening his practice in the Delta, Williams has been joined by Patrick Sewell, his partner in Delta Radiology Associates. Sewell, based in Cleveland, previously served as chief of the Division of Interventional Oncology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. They share a common approach to radiology.

 

"We are both pretty innovative and like to keep up with the latest thing," Williams said.

 

Facilitating that desire, Northwest Regional Medical Center has added a new 64-slice CT scanner and upgraded other equipment for its radiology department, which had been without regular physician coverage before Williams' arrival.

 

A native of Mississippi, Williams had never been to the Delta before coming to interview at NRMC. He, in turn, recruited Sewell to join him, and the two expect a third radiologist will be needed in the near future.

 

"We're stretched a little thin between the two of us and are working pretty long hours," Williams said. "It seems like we get more and more busy as we do new procedures and as more people find out about us."

 

The growing role of radiology in so many forms of treatment is something Williams noted in medical school — and helped determine his specialty choice.

 

There, he had the experience of being involved with surgical procedures to fix, for example, abdominal aneurisms. That meant a major, high-risk procedure both for the patient and the surgeon.

 

But once a fix could be reached instead through interventional radiology, the choice seemed clear.

 

"I got to see where everything changed from doing it surgically to using interventional radiology," he said. "I thought, 'This is the way everything is going to go.'"

 

Williams attended medical school at Louisiana State University. He grew up in Louisiana, after living in the Jackson area for the first 10 years of his life.

 

When work allows, he spends time traveling and also stays active through tennis and running.