Q: For many years, I have heard repeated attempt to prevent certification in any additional areas of anesthesia outside of pain management and critical care. Whereas, I personally believe that certification in pediatric anesthesia is long overdue and essential for the advancement of the specialty.
1. When will this certification process come to fruition and will the ABA be administering this new test?
2. Do you believe that perioperative TEE training should be included in the formal education of pediatric anesthesia fellows? If so, how much should they learn?
A: 1. Dr. Steven Hall detailed the status of the pediatric anesthesia certification process in February's ASA newsletter, what follows is from that text. Since 1997 the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has offered accreditation of pediatric anesthesiology programs. Thus, individual programs gain pediatric certification following a formal submission and review process. As mentioned in the letter, subcertification for pediatric anesthesia does not exist. Currently both the ABA and the American Board of Medical Specialties are reviewing the possibility of adding pediatric anesthesiology as a subspecialty. Both of these groups would have to agree that pediatric anesthesiology merits subspecialization with the final decision resting with the ABMS.
At this point, I was unable to get word on how a test would be administered.
2. Currently there is no push to adding this training to general pediatric anesthesia training programs. Most training programs still rely heavily on their cardiology counterparts to do the majority of TEE analysis. If you are interested in learning TEE techniques during your fellowship it is important to communicate with the director of the fellowship program you are applying to and find out if training is both available and practical during your fellowship year or whether you need to extend your time to accomplish your TEE training goals.
Jeffrey L. Galinkin, MD
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
