Cardiology vs. Interventional Cardiology

What exactly is the difference beween card. and interventional card.??
What does a regular cardiologist do all day? can they do any procedures?

What is the lifestyle difference?? (although i know that varies by practice, but in general)

What about time of training? How long is it for the 2 disciplines?

and finally, the pay... i hate to even ask, but what is the difference in salary?

Thanks for any help and please excuse my ignorance 🙂

streetdoc

Interventional cardiologists usually do an an extra year of fellowship training after completing their 3-year cardiology fellowship (for a total of 7 years of post-MD training vs. 6 years for cardiology). They spend most of their time in the cardiac cath lab and do interventional procedures (i.e. PTCA, stents, etc.) Some interventional cardiologists also practice "general" cardiology. They may see patients in their offices and do echos, stress tests, etc.

Interventionalists usually have higher salaries. However within the past few years, medicare reimbursement for interventional procedures has been slashed quite a bit. So that probably affects salaries to some extent.

Interventional fellowships are mostly two years now. One reason is that the # of cases required for the CAQ (certificate of added qualification) has gone up, and the other is that most programs are incorporating training in perpheral intervention in addition to coronary intervention.

Also, some general Cards fellowships are four years, so that could potentially make your post med school training
3+(3-4)+(1-2).

Friend of mine did two years of interventional training after Cardiology fellowship. He now heads the electrophysiology lab in Corpus Christy. Income potential is awesome.

I work in a Cardiologist office with about 20 cardiologists. All of them, it seems, did either a Cardiology or Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship and then a year of "Interventional" or "Non-Invasive." Some did additional fellowships in "echocardiography" or "electrophysiology," I think just an extra year.

What is the difference between the Cardiology and Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship--or is there any? If they didn't do any extra years beyond the cardiology fellowship, does that make them "general cardiologists?"

Sorry if this sounds ignorant--but I'm just entering medical school this fall and am interested, I think, in invasive cardiology. I wan to make sure I understand all that it entails.

Originally posted by hedging
Friend of mine did two years of interventional training after Cardiology fellowship. He now heads the electrophysiology lab in Corpus Christy. Income potential is awesome.

Click to expand...

Your friend probably did an EP fellowship rather than an interventional fellowship.

There aren't too many people going into EP but it seems like a good career path. They don't seem to do a lot of emergent procedures like the interventional people.

General Cards fellowship is the same as Cardiology or Cardiovascular Diseases. It is 3-4 years in duration and teaches one to be proficient in ECHO, all forms of stress testing (+/- nuclear techniques depending on where you go), cardiac intensive care, consultative cardiology, electrocardiography (of course), pharmacologic EP, diagnostic catherization (angiography, left and right heart cath, intensive care monitoring, other catheter based procedures EXCEPT INTERVENTIONAL ones). There is other stuff, but I've mentioned the big ones.

A general Cardiologist is either INVASIVE (the catheter based stuff I described above) or NON-INVASIVE (focuses on ECHO and non invasive techniques of risk stratification, but does not do diagnostic cathetertization).

You can do fellowships in:

CHF/Transplant -- 1-2 years, focuses on management of CHF pt and usually encompasses Transplant Cardiology training. As you can imagine, most of these guys are academic or are affiliated with one of those big heart hospitals with transplant programs

Interventional -- 2 years, with SMALL minority of 1 year spots. This teaches all cardiac (PTCA, rotablator, TMLR, valvulopasty, carotid interventions, and so on and so on) and most peripheral interventional techniques.

ECHO -- 1 year, just like it sounds

Nuclear -- often combined with ECHO under a "non-invasive" fellowship or separate, teaches more in depth the various diagnostic nuclear modalities like Ad Thal, MUGA, etc.

Preventative -- 1 year, just like it sounds, usually with lots of Epi and biostats teaching.

EP -- 2 years. Most places allow you to fold in your first year of EP into your final year of general Cards. The orthopods of Cardiology (in terms of "they kind of forget everything else they learned")-- pharmacologic and procedural EP (mapping, ablations, surigcal implantation of ICDs and pacemakers). Very esoteric but very cool stuff. In demand now because of studies like MADIT-II and others.

There are more specific details to each, but you get the general idea.

Yes, this subject sounds interesting, indeed.