MI Asst Prof Dr. Farah Cadour part of first interventional radiology in space team to attempt drainage in microgravity!
Post-Flight Update
On March 19, MI Assistant Professor & Cardiothoracic Radiologist with the Joint Department of Medical Imaging (JDMI), was part of the crew of the third flight of mission IRIS-one, alongside her friends and colleagues, Dr. Braye, Dr. Capocci and AirFrance A350 Pilot Officer Dubois.
IRIS (Interventional Radiology In Space), under the direction of Dr. Soussan, Hôpital Nord, Marseille, France, was created from a partnership between the French Society of Radiology and the CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), who supported this flight.
During this AirZeroG flight, made possible and operated by Novespace in Mérignac (France), the crew evaluated the feasibility of a nephrostomy in microgravity — which was recreated by 31 parabolas. Crew members also got to enjoy weightlessness in a free-floating zone on the flight between scientific experiments.
Stay tuned for results to be published soon!
See pictures from the flight below:
This week, MI Assistant Professor Dr. Farah Cadour, as part of the crew of Interventional Radiology In Space, or IRIS, a French association founded by Dr. Cadour and colleagues and friends from France, will be part of the 0G parabolic flights in space to be the first to attempt to perform a drainage in microgravity.
The aim of IRIS is to develop interventional radiology solutions for space that can also be applied to remote places here on Earth. Working with the CNES (Centre national d'études spatiales), which is equivalent to North America’s NASA, the crew will attempt to perform a drainage to study whether Seldinger vs Trocar technique works best, potential challenges of drainage in microgravity and study the fluid dynamics in microgravity.
Three separate flights will be taking place this week in the mornings of March 17, 18, 19, taking off from Bordeaux through Novespace Agency, and will take approx. three hours each. Dr. Cadour will be on the March 19 space flight. Within each flight there will be 30 paraboles (so we are decomposing the procedure by steps to follow different paraboles). There is a total of 12 crew members, four per flight, captained by the President of IRIS, Dr. Jérôme Soussan, IR staff in Hôpital Nord University Hospital, Marseille, France.
The team anticipates to debrief the results after the flights, with plans to issue a paper of the study and results.
To see coverage and updates of the flights this week, follow IRIS on Instagram @iris_inspace and LinkedIn @IRIS – Interventional Radiology In Space.
Have an incredible and safe flight, Dr. Cadour!