Like all specialties, the activities of a peds cardiologist will vary depending on ones training and practice setting.
For example, in private practice, doctors see a lot of patients as outpatients, and often refer their inpatient care to the academic medical center. Wheras in academics, they will be involved in inpatient care of primary cardiology patients AND post-op cardiac surgery patients.
Basically, the peds cards role is to diagnose and medically (and surgical if you count interventional as surgery) treat problems of the cardiovascular system from the fetus to the teenager. They will also take care of adults with congenital heart disease (the adult cards docs are not well trained to take care of people with complex anatomy) and their heart transplant patients they followed as children and are now young adults.
Problems they primarily manage are congenital heart disease, acquired heart disease, CHF, heart transplantation, and arrythmias. They often serve as a consultative service for problems like rheumatic heart disease (not seen very often), Kawasaki's, endocarditis, etc.
Common outpatient problems referred from the primary care doctors are murmurs, syncope, and palpitations. Many of these problems are eventually diagnosed as non-cardiac or benign, but in my opinion they are fun problems to work up and provide a refreshing contrast to the very sick heart failure and heart transplant patients.
In terms of diagnosis, they use several diagnostic modalities. EKG interpretation is done several times a day. Echocardiography can be performed on the prergnant female to further delineate the anatomy of a fetus whose prenatal ultrasound was abnormal. Echo is also used to delineate anatomy, determine degree of blood flow in various parts of the body (flow across a shunt (eg, VSD), flow through pulmonary vasculature (eg, pulm HTN), etc. EKG's and echo are done on a daily basis. Cardiac cath is also a diagnostic modality that is used less often. Large centers may do a cath every day whereas smaller centers maybe twice weekly.
In terms of treatment, cards docs use medical treatment mainly. Interventional cards is becoming bigger as a treatment modality since certain procedures are starting to transition from "experimental" to standard of care, such as VSD closures. ASD and PDA closures in the cath lab are performed at most centers, as are atrial septostomies (balloon dilation of PFO to increase shunting through a child with obstructed LV or RV flow).
I hope all the info helps. I wrote this quickly so I apologize for the typos.
