One of the nation’s most disadvantaged regions is getting some of the most progressive care in the field of interventional radiology — all thanks to a peculiar mix of politics, economics, friendship and fate.

Patrick E. Sewell, MD, the former chief of interventional oncology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, is serving today on the medical staff at Bolivar Medical Center in Cleveland. He was recruited to the Delta by a colleague who had set up a private practice in Clarksdale and needed help covering Cleveland as well.

“I liked it here a lot, and I really felt I saw a lot of opportunity to do some good — which is the reason I went into medicine,” said Sewell, a fourth-generation physician.

“Most people take a job because they want job satisfaction,” he said. “Yes, they want a job, but they also want to make a difference.”

That’s been the drive that has defined Sewell’s career, from his pioneering work in fighting tumors with image-guided probes to his latest focus on peripheral arterial disease and limb salvage among diabetics.

While his career has spanned traditional fields, the common thread has been the use of sophisticated imaging technology and less-invasive techniques to achieve results that once required open surgery. His career has also been defined by the desire to push forward in those areas.

Sewell originated eight ICD-9 codes for procedures he developed, including interventional MRI renal cryosurgery and radiofrequency ablation of lung tumors. His pioneering work in interventional oncology has drawn patients from around the world, while he has also traveled broadly to give lectures and serve visiting professorships in Europe and Asia, and at domestic institutions like Stanford University and Columbia University.

In recent years, Sewell has partnered with a group of Swedish imaging scientists to found a software company, Sapheneia, designed to and market a software solution for CT scans that enables a lower radiation dose while improving image quality — thereby reducing exposure for both patients and physicians. Sapheneia Clarity™CT Solution has already been installed in more than 40 imaging centers and hospitals in Europe and the United States — including at Bolivar General.

It stands to reason, then, that when Sewell arrived in the Mississippi Delta in February 2009, word spread quickly.

“A lot of the internal-medicine doctors did their residency while I was on faculty at UMC, so a lot of them knew me and knew my skill set,” Sewell said. “The next thing I know, the hospital’s interventional radiology service — which was nonexistent before I came — was all of a sudden very busy.”

It was a new field for Bolivar Medical Center, which had previously known radiology only as a diagnostic discipline.

“It really freaked them out when I had patients flying over from Japan for renal cryosurgery and paying cash, or getting calls from patients in Europe,” Sewell said. “It was a different environment.”

Sewell pioneered the field of interventional oncology during his tenure at UMC. He served as an assistant professor of radiology and surgery from 1998-2005.

He then stepped out into private practice, co-founding an ambitious 15,000-square-foot freestanding interventional radiology center in downtown Jackson. While the patients came, the surrounding medical community wasn’t ready to support the center.

After a year and a half, Sewell closed the center and retreated to Madison Regional Medical Center, where he continued his work on a smaller scale while he reassessed his future. He also needed to focus on caring for his mother in his hometown of Shreveport, La., after she was diagnosed with dementia.

It was after he was satisfied with her care situation there, and while he was considering a faculty position at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, that Sewell received a well-timed call.

A friend who had been on the cutting edge of interventional radiology in Alabama had gone into private practice in Clarksdale and now needed help covering the hospital in Cleveland as well.

“For about a year and a half, he’d been calling me saying, ‘Do you know anybody who wants to work?’” Sewell recalled. “He wanted to bring someone on who would stay, but not many people want to move to the Delta.”

For Sewell, though, the time was right. He agreed to help his colleague, Jason Williams, MD, for a month and ended up staying on.

“I’ve always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person,” said Sewell, who is now a full-time resident of Cleveland. “This looked good for now.”

Today, he’s applying his experience to problems faced by the Delta’s population of diabetic patients who have hypertension and hyperlipidemia. Oftentimes, they are smokers as well, and are facing amputation of the foot or leg.

Through a variety of noninvasive and invasive testing, Sewell gauges the blood supply to a patient’s lower extremities and, if appropriate, can remove the calcified plaque through atherectomy.

“Now the vessel is not this lead pipe; it will stretch again as you restore the elasticity,” he said. “You can take their arterial disease process back in time 10, 20 years — even if you can only get one artery open of three below the knee. What it means for the patient may be they lose a toe instead of a foot.”

While he continues to see patients in his interventional radiology and interventional oncology practices, he has also opened up a new non-narcotic pain-management clinic. He delivers medial branch nerve blocks to treat pain associated with herniated disks, and recently began performing a new minimally invasive technique for lumbar spinal stenosis as an alternative to traditional laminectomy.

Sewell is a graduate of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, where he completed an internship in internal medicine and a residency in diagnostic radiology.

He also completed two fellowships, in interventional radiology and body imaging, at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

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