Two year Interventional Cards fellowships

[fuel200]

I was talking to a current cards fellow who spoke to our class about potential careers after medical school, and he said now some hospitals are offering the option of 2 year interventional fellowship(not research based) that teach you more rigorous stenting in other vasculatures, such as renal artery, and in general the training just helps with coronary intervention in general. Can anyone speak to this, and if so what do you think is the positive side of doing such a thing when a 1 year fellowship basically teaches you the same thing?

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[drbruce]

Better training. Avoid the lawsuits

 

[Qtip96]

I was talking to a current cards fellow who spoke to our class about potential careers after medical school, and he said now some hospitals are offering the option of 2 year interventional fellowship(not research based) that teach you more rigorous stenting in other vasculatures, such as renal artery, and in general the training just helps with coronary intervention in general. Can anyone speak to this, and if so what do you think is the positive side of doing such a thing when a 1 year fellowship basically teaches you the same thing?

1 year is more than sufficient to learn PCIs (provided the program has sufficient numbers of procedures), with some peripheral nuances, such as radial approach and renal angiograpghy. some people undertake a second year for further specialization in periperhal intervention (renal, carotid, lower extremities, etc.).

there are several reasons why programs work like this.
1. most IFs in their second year do not want to continue to take regular interventional call.
2. there are not enough peripheral cases to go around, so not everyone can be a peripheral specialist. time is necessary to get the volumetric load of procedures (i.e. the 2nd year).
3. for people who want to just learn coronary interventions, then a 1 year PCI fellowship is sufficient.