Will cards fellowship be harder next year?

[ecCA1]

Once you have to do a cards fellowship to be TEE-certified as an anesthesiologist, I've heard that hearts fellowships will become noticeably more difficult to obtain. How realistic is this?

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[2ndyear]

In my opinion, not really. It's hard to pass up big bucks as a CA-3 to spend one more year at around $50,000. Cardiac fellowships are large in number as well and it would take a huge demand to fill them. There are also so many practices that don't even do hearts, unless TEE becomes 'gold standard' monitoring, if ever in non-cardiac surgery then the incentive to become certified is small. Also the reimbursement is not great for an exam.