And for the record I would go to Rush over any other Chicago IR fellowship. They successfully grew their peripheral and aortic practice from the ground up (now doing like 80% or arterial endovasc interventions) and have nearly boxed out other specialists. I rather learn how to do that than do my 100th Chemoembo or ablation that you will not even do again in most private practices unless you are at a tertiary center.
I respectfully disagree. I think there is a lot of people right now who believes that PAD is one and the only worthwhile thing to learn in IR and programs that don't do as much PADs are trash.
There are a few usual IR fellowship suspect that got talked up a lot because of that.
The issues about PAD is that we no longer fully control the forefront of research and development in PAD.
Meanwhile, a lot of great names (including some places in Bostons that are often trashed by people as "literally suck) are actually doing a lot of innoviation, just not in the high and mighty PAD and they get ignored. We still control the forefront of things like gastric embolization or prostate work and those should really be the forefront.
For me, my goal is to carve out new niches and figure out new roles for my field. I am just not contend with learning how to put in a stent graft. If I just wanted to do that I would have checked a different box (hint, it's called vascular surgery).
IR is so much more than vascular surgery, yet too many people I run into think that if a program doesn't offer vascular-lite it's a bad program.
Additionally, the goal is to ultimately find a job. I've known enough people to know that the big names like Boston programs, Columbia and Cornell actually places people (including academic, full IR jobs) just as well, if not better than of the PAD heavy places that get jerked around here a lot.
More over, programs change so much over the years, and if a program ONLY has PAD as its distinguishing feature, it can be swept away in days by a group of aggressive vascular surgeons. Meanwhile, a big name don't change and stay with you throughout your career.
A guy who graduated from Harvard is going to be at least equal, if not more at an advantage at almost every job search scenario vs. Rush grad except at PAD heavy situations.
The other thing about PAD, is where will you be doing it? Big centers don't do PAD except at a handful of places, and when you go to the Podunk, you will do PAD, whether you wanted to or not. One of my good friend had no training in his fellowship for PAD, and he is now doing 70% PAD work.
This is why I personally chose name (to a point) over supposed "training" (which usually means how much PAD work, ironicallt.)