Most important attribute of cardiac fellowships

[Nivens]

While I understand a balanced experience is ideal, what in isolation do you think the most important thing to look for in cardiac fellowships? Case complexity? Raw case volume? Quality of echo instruction? Exposure to structural heart interventions?

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[Beach bum]

App of the above

 

[bigdan]

If you can somehow find it, you want a place with graduated independence, although this may be tough in an environment where both cardiac surgeons and cardiac anesthesiologists are so extraordinarily particular about what they like/want/don't want.

Other than that, the 2018 graduate should seek to be facile with 3D and all things echo for structural heart procedures. Everything is going the way of percutaneous/catheter-based intervention (maybe arch vessel dissection and endocarditis surgery will be holdouts?) Would say that "learning echo" and doing complex cases are bare minimum requirements for ACTA programs.

 

[anes121508]

While I understand a balanced experience is ideal, what in isolation do you think the most important thing to look for in cardiac fellowships? Case complexity? Raw case volume? Quality of echo instruction? Exposure to structural heart interventions?

A couple of years ago I read an article about why gronk should be my number one fantasy football pick. Had to do with the fact that there were plenty of qb's rb's wr's to go around. Most importantly though, the point differential between the top 10-15 guys was pretty minimal. However if you compared gronk to all he other tight ends, he blew them out of the water in terms of scoring. I picked gronk and won the league.

Silly analogy, but my argument is that plenty of fellowships have case complexity and volume. I beleive that 3-d echo and structural heart experience
Is the gronk of cardiac fellowship.