Cardiothoracic Anesthesia Fellowship

[thurzon]

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Where would be the best teaching CT anesthesia fellowship in the country?
Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Duke, Stanford, Texas Heart, MGH, BWH, UCLA, Columbia, Cornell, University of Michigan, Washington University, Chicago, etc.? Any thoughts about this programs?

Any previous CT fellows that can give honest opinion and thoughts about previous experiences?

I am a CA2 who is deeply interested on pursuing advanced clinical training in CT anesthesia.

 

[bigdan]

Maybe you've seen this already, or maybe not, but a great website: http://www.scahq.org/

It won't tell you the "best teaching" but will give you an idea on cases/numbers.

dc

 

[periopdoc]

What are your post-fellowship plans? The best CT Fellowship for a person looking for an academic clinical career is different than the best one for a person looking for a academic research career is different than the best one for a person looking to go into a private practice heart hospital is different for than the best one for a person looking to be "the heart guy" in BFE.

I went to the best CT fellowship in the country (for me and my plans of being "the heart guy" in BFE), but it would be almost a worthless fellowship if you were planning on an academic research career.

Generally speaking any of the places you listed would serve you fine, it is more a matter of where you fit in with your personality and plans. I personally would stay away from the MGH, BWH, Duke institutions because I would not work well in what appear to be very hierarchical systems, but that is just my personality.

- pod

 

[CrazyJake]

Can someone explain the difference and what the implications are b/n accredited and non-accredited CT programs.

I would have thought that accredited was the only way to go, but there are many good programs on the non side from the above web link that I would think you'd get good training and cases.

thx,
CJ

 

[periopdoc]

Do a search as this has been debated/ discussed ad nauseum. If you want to obtain advanced perioperative TEE certification (advanced PTEeXAM) from the National Board of Echocardiography, you must complete a ACGME accredited fellowship unless you completed residency prior to July 2009. This is the "classic" certification that most of us are thinking of when discussing TEE certification.

There is a new Basic PTEeXAM certification that does not require a fellowship. This really muddies the waters when we start talking about future implications of certification, and I am not sure the NBE did us any favors by coming up with this new certification level.

Currently, no certification (basic nor advanced) is required for performing or billing perioperative TEE. At the hospital level, there may theoretically be institutions that already require certification of some sort for TEE credentialing. I am not aware of any that currently require it, but they may exist.

Moving forward, as more CRNA's and non-fellowship trained physicians start to perform TEE, institutions may require certification, prior to credentialing, as a means of quality assurance. Whether basic certification is sufficient is unclear.

What that means for you is that your future is safest in a formal ACGME fellowship. However, if you are unsuccessful in landing a ACGME fellowship, the non-ACGME fellowships are reasonable alternatives.

- pod