Interventional radiology is defined by the Society of Interventional Radiology as ‘the delivery of minimally invasive, targeted treatments, performed using imaging for guidance’. Although the principles of angiography for diagnosis have existed since the 1920s, and today remain a well-established modality for the diagnosis of many common conditions, it was not until the 1960s that the American Charles Dotter, and other pioneers, extended these techniques from diagnosis to treatment.1 Their foresight, together with ever-increasing technological capability, allowed the use of transluminal angioplasty for the treatment of peripheral vascular disease and led Dotter to say, in 1964, that ‘it should be evident that the vascular catheter can be more than a tool for passive means for diagnostic observations: used with imagination it can become an important surgical instrument’.2,3 Thus, interventional radiology as a specialty was born. Work on the cerebral vasculature began in the 1970s, largely for neurosurgical conditions. It is perhaps not surprising that the initial, and still best known, uses of interventional radiology were for the highly accessible vascular system, and for the type of non-vascular conditions that offered poor surgical access, such as in neurosurgery. More recently, interventional radiology techniques have been applied to head and neck cancer patients, initially with the use of detachable balloon occlusion in patients with laryngeal cancer and impending carotid artery rupture. From this, the range of applications of interventional radiology in the extra-cranial head and neck has continued to evolve and expand. These applications include line placement, foreign body removal, placement of feeding tubes (primary gastrostomy, gastrojejunostomy or jejunostomy tubes), and oesophageal or bronchial dilatation and stenting. The main focus of this review is on the vascular applications of interventional radiology in the head and neck, which can be divided into three main categories: management of acute haemorrhage (e.g. epistaxis, carotid blowout); management of vascular lesions (e.g. tumours, arterio-venous malformations); and venous sampling.