Echo Boards 2016

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HeartWindow

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Hi All,
Tons of threads on Echo Board review but wanted to refresh things as there are more resources available in the past 1-2 years. What is everyone's planned test prep and timeline for prep?

Here are a few resources I've come across:

Videos:
-ASE Videos
-Mayo Clinics DVDs

Review Questions:
-Klein and Asher book
-Sorrell and Jayasuriya book
-ASE mock exam (?)

Books/Other Review:
-Edelman physics
-Otto text
-Oh text
-Feigenbaum text


What else is out there? Do people find it necessary to do both ASE Videos and Mayo Clinic DVDs? Any preference on review questions or other books?

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I did the Mayo clinic videos first, then the ASE videos. As far as questions Klein and ASE mock exam (its actually two 150 question blocks) are good enough. Edelman physics notes were good. I read some of Feigenbaum during fellowship for congenital heart disease, and valvular disease, but I did not touch it as a review. Did not look at Otto or Oh. Passed the test ~90% percentile.
 
I did the Mayo clinic videos first, then the ASE videos. As far as questions Klein and ASE mock exam (its actually two 150 question blocks) are good enough. Edelman physics notes were good. I read some of Feigenbaum during fellowship for congenital heart disease, and valvular disease, but I did not touch it as a review. Did not look at Otto or Oh. Passed the test ~90% percentile.

Thanks! The Mayo videos and ASE videos both seem pretty expensive. Did you split with others? Use older versions? I have access to the 2014 (?) ASE videos.
 
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Can somebody tell me what the setup for the actual exam will be. How many questions is there? how many blocks, how many hours per block. Is timing an issue
I tried to find this online, but cannot. Also, what is a good ASE percentage correct on the practice exam. 3 months out, on the first ASE practice exam, I scored 62%... how is that?
 
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Good luck to all ... that exam is quite tough so don't underestimate it. I don't want to contribute to the anxiety about this test but the people in my program who just showed up without studying didn't pass. I thought the Klein book was excellent ... exam was ... esoteric. I studied reasonably hard (took exam after 1-2 months with dedicated nightly studying May/June 2nd/3rd year fellowship after 7 months of echo with plans for level 3 training and am at one of the "top" labs in the country for whatever that means) and still only did fair ... so there must be some places where people get really good (or at least congruent with board testing) echo training or there are experienced people taking the exam.

In retrospect definitely worth the knowledge you will get by studying to pass if you plan to interpret echo on your own post fellowship.
 
Hi all, Can anyone tell me where can I find the edelman physics and congenital hand outs please. Very much appreciate it!
 
Edelman Physics as well as the Congenital notes are provided at the ASE echo board review course as part of the syllabus .
 
Can any member please comment on the quality and benefits of Echo questions provided by the " BOARDVITALS ". Will reviewing these assist in passing the echo board exam . So far I personally did not come across anybody who has mentioned utilizing this resource for their echo board preparation . Thanks
 
Finally done with the test! Let's get everyone's input and share. Here is what I did (Most useful are in Bold)

  • Edelman
  • Textbook: Oh
  • ASE Guidelines
  • Mayo videos
  • Feighenbaum's Pictures/Videos & M-Mode Article
  • ASE Board Review Congenital Notes
  • Questions: Klein-Asher + Sorrell
I think the test was fair, the quality of the videos and pictures were great but of course, there were some very picky questions. I don't know the results but I think I passed. What surprised me the most was that most questions were not long! Most were straightforward with a short clinical vignette.
 
I'm just glad they are over.... Otherwise similar resources used here: ASE Guidelines, Mayo videos, ASE questions/practice test, Klein question book, Edelman physics.
 
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I just started my 2nd year fellowship, and I just took my exam. Last year starting fellowship, I barely knew anything about ECHO. I decided to take it around January of this year, and studied hard for it.

I read Feigenbaum throughly once in the beginning
Watched Mayo DVD at least 7-8x
ASE practice exam and Klein, both about 1.5x

I think the Mayo DVD are golden... if you just listen to every word they say... I feel 70% of the test can be answered by the concepts taught from Mayo lectures. The rest.. comes from doing questions and some luck.
Thought the exam was fair, and hard. Hope I passed.
 
What kind of fellowship leaves you enough time to watch 40 hour long videos 7 times?

What I did

I Read Jae K Oh during fellowship
Watched Mayo DVDs once and took notes
Did Klein questions and ASE practice questions (the ones that cost 250)
Read Feigenbaum's M mode paper
Edelman's physics note

I thought it was random and ~10-20% of the clinical questions did not represent what is useful for clinical echo reading and perhaps 50% of physics ones. It was hard and honestly I'm not sure if more studying would have helped because it was so random.

The software was easy to use (just like every other board exam we have taken) but the calculator sucked. It kept cutting out on my exam and would go to zero when I used the keyboard. This wasted some time and overall was just annoying.

I thought Klein was good. I didnt think the ASE questions that you can purchace were worth the money if you do Klein. Edelman's physics was good. Not sure you need the Feigenbaum M mode paper if you do Klein.

In terms of time, it is 50 questions in 60 minutes x 3 and cases of 50 questions in 1.5 hours. In only one block did I have problems with time.
 
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Can any member please comment on the quality and benefits of Echo questions provided by the " BOARDVITALS ". Will reviewing these assist in passing the echo board exam . So far I personally did not come across anybody who has mentioned utilizing this resource for their echo board preparation . Thanks

I haven't even heard of these and don't know anyone who has used them.
 
What kind of fellowship leaves you enough time to watch 40 hour long videos 7 times?

What I did

I Read Jae K Oh during fellowship
Watched Mayo DVDs once and took notes
Did Klein questions and ASE practice questions (the ones that cost 250)
Read Feigenbaum's M mode paper
Edelman's physics note

I thought it was random and ~10-20% of the clinical questions did not represent what is useful for clinical echo reading and perhaps 50% of physics ones. It was hard and honestly I'm not sure if more studying would have helped because it was so random.

Same here. I came out thinking that even if I had several more weeks to prepare it probably wouldn't change much. Also thought the clinical oriented questions could have been little more "practical" to what actually happens practice.

The software was easy to use (just like every other board exam we have taken) but the calculator sucked. It kept cutting out on my exam and would go to zero when I used the keyboard. This wasted some time and overall was just annoying.

Had exact same issue with the calculator. Using the keyboard was fine for inputing numbers but using the '=' button on the keypad would blank it out, and using the mouse to input numbers on the on-screen calculator sometimes wasn't reliable.

I thought Klein was good. I didnt think the ASE questions that you can purchace were worth the money if you do Klein. Edelman's physics was good. Not sure you need the Feigenbaum M mode paper if you do Klein.

In terms of time, it is 50 questions in 60 minutes x 3 and cases of 50 questions in 1.5 hours. In only one block did I have problems with time.

Yea I only ran into time issues on one block and that was just because I got hung up on a couple earlier questions and lost track of time.

I think the Mayo videos were good but there was certainly some minutia that was not covered in those. If anything I wished I would have gone back through some of the ASE guideline documents. Over the course of the past couple years I've tried to go through most of the actual guideline PDFs a couple times (namely Chamber quant, diastolic function, Right heart eval, Prosthetic valve eval, stress echo, valve stenosis, etc..)[/quote][/quote][/QUOTE]
 
Passed! so happy. My weakest areas were Congenital & Valves (valves!).

Looking back the resources that helped me the most were Edelman (a must!) + Klein / Sorrel Question Books + Feighenbaum's Pictures/Videos & M-Mode Article.

Still got a lot to learn. Im a 3rd y fellow going into Heart Failure next year. Studying for this board forced me to learn so much more about Cardiology in General; all Cardio fellows should take it.
 
Passed... I couldn't read Otto... too dense or Feigenbaum for that matter. I did current ASE videos twice through and old Mayo videos once. Went through Klein once. And read the Edleman and congenital packets several times. Also took my own notes from the videos.
 
"I just started my 2nd year fellowship, and I just took my exam. Last year starting fellowship, I barely knew anything about ECHO. I decided to take it around January of this year, and studied hard for it.

I read Feigenbaum throughly once in the beginning
Watched Mayo DVD at least 7-8x
ASE practice exam and Klein, both about 1.5x

I think the Mayo DVD are golden... if you just listen to every word they say... I feel 70% of the test can be answered by the concepts taught from Mayo lectures. The rest.. comes from doing questions and some luck.
Thought the exam was fair, and hard. Hope I passed."

Initially posted this after the test. Got my results, 586 about 78th percentile. Hope this helps future test takers
 
So looking at the score to pass, it seems the passing cutoff was ~27th-28th percentile meaning only 72-73% of takers passed the echo boards this year. That seems pretty freaking low and worse than in recent years.
I too passed easily which was surprising since I felt it was pretty hard. I had already convinced myself I wouldn't take it again if I didn't pass. My score in the 600s (80ish% correct), 90th percentile.

In retrospect, the things I'd recommend:
Mayo videos
Klein book
Feigenbaum's M mode paper (you will get all of this from Klein's book but I thought it was worth the hour to read it)
Edelman's physics - don't blow off this one. There were things on here that I had never heard of that I blew off and didn't memorize that ended up on the test.

As above, I did the ASE questions which were expensive and didn't really teach much more than what was in Klein's book. The same concepts and calculations were in both. I also perused the Sorrell book and did a few hundred questions. It was inferior to Klein's book. It didn't add anything special and so wouldn't recommend it over Klein.

On an unrelated note, I seriously can't get over the fact that Phospholipid watched all of the Mayo videos 7 times. There are 40 hours of videos in one viewing alone. He must be in that new virtual cardiology fellowship where you don't actually see patients or do procedures. It would take an entire month, watching videos 12 hours a day to get through these videos 7-8 times... I mean damn!

As Path said, I do think there was utility in studying for these boards and taking them.
 
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2nd year cards fellow, passed as well. Scored 596 (80ish percentile). Huge relief as I was worried about this one overall...the feeling leaving that test was far from pleasant. I would recommend all fellows to attempt this test, the amount of general cardio knowledge you get through studying for this beast is invaluable.
Recommendations:
GUIDELINES are #1 for sure
ASE text--dense but an easy read
ASE conference or videos
KLEIN--make it cover to cover at least twice
Tips and Tricks--ok overall, not as good as Klein
Mayo Videos--ok overall, ASE better
Edelman for physics, memorize packet day before
Echo Manual--ok, good intro book to echo, not sufficient for this test though

Also on a side note, 7-8x through the mayo videos?! Those are super long, extremely boring at times and what fellow could ever take the time to do that?! My weekends, nights and most of my study time was dedicated to this monster of an exam for ~5 months and to get through the ASE vids once was tough. This thing is no joke, with an approximate 70% pass rate this year. But I would never recommend anyone attempt to watch mayo vids 7-8x, just absurd to me. Good luck all, don't worry...we all thought we failed for sure.
 
Passed!

Also a huge sigh of relief here as I honestly thought there might be a chance that this was going to be the first board exam/certification test in my medical education process that I was going to fail..... It was tough.

Used similar resources as above:
-MAYO videos
-ASE guidelines (probably one of the more helpful things for me as over the past year I went through the major ones several times just during our usual echo/non-invasive months)
-Klein questions, though I didn't get all the way through it (I don't like during question banks)
-Edelman for physics

Now on to Nuc boards....
 
passed as well. :soexcited: I have to give a lot of credit to threads like this which helped focus my studies on high yield resources.

with that said, my 2 cents which echo previous posts:
Mayo (or ASE) videos, Klein questions and Edelman for physics are a must
ASE guidelines - highly recommended, easy read, high yield
If you're starting early, I highly recommend going through an echo textbook (i.e otto, oh or feigenbaum) to establish a solid foundation
The test IMO was fairly straight forward and fair. The stems were surprisingly short. I didn't have any particular issues with video/image quality.
Remember, you only need to pass and I honestly think the aforementioned resources w/ the exception of an echo textbook should comfortably get you through enough of the questions to pass

On a side note, i'm impressed with those who take the echo boards after their first year. there's no way i would've been able to carve out time to study during my first year. I wonder what is the norm throughout the nation.
 
Yes I passed too with very decent percentile [ honestly I did not hope to though ] . But guys please do not take this exam lightly ,as I stated in my previous post [ please read if you can ; done 2 days after taking this exam so some honest and heartfelt feelings were expressed ] . I also felt the exam to be very difficult and on occasion rather nonspecific . I did all the same vast resources as mentioned by all my fellow colleagues [ with the exception of reading a text book ] . In my humble opinion , the highest yield items for the echo board are Klein review [ fortunately the newer edition should be coming early next year ], Edelman booklet and may be 3 ECHO guidelines topics and if some prep time left then to do on-line ASE board review lectures - I used to listen to them during my commute to and from work .
I hope my comments will help a fellow cardiologist for future exam prep ; as this forum helped me tremendously , thanks to the posts written by the past exam takers .
One thing is for sure that this exam prep benefitted me by forcing me to review a lot of echo related concepts that I may have either ignored or taken less seriously . HOPE THIS HELPS AND GREAT LUCK GUYS .
 
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I certainly agree that studying for this exam forced me to review a lot of general cardio topics. I also am impressed at those who took it after their first heart, hats off to y'all.
 
Passed! Studied for about a solid 2 months. The most helpful thing that worked for me were the Mayo videos. I only got through them once but they were extremely helpful. Some topics, like the evaluation of valvular prostheses, I thought were invaluable. Klein book is the best qBank and has questions that I thought were overall tougher then the ones on the actual exam. The doppler chapter in Klein is excellent and pretty much takes you through every possibile question on the topic. Edelman physics notes are very important to go through because some questions come straight from there. I agree with everyone in that studying for the echo boards does teach you a lot about Gen Cards and is probably something that every fellow should take. Congratulations to everyone.
 
Thankfully passed! To echo valds post, Mayo videos were key to my studying. The videos are comprehensive to the point that they can probably be used as the primary source of material for the boards except for Physics. Edelman notes were great and questions showed up from his notes. I would also read the congenital packet from ASE which has A LOT of important stuff that showed up on the boards. Finally, Klein's book is significantly better than Sorrell's q bank and I would focus solely on getting through Klein's questions. Tough exam but passable with the right study resources.
 
For the physics section, all I used was the Mayo DVD, Klein, and did the ASC practice exams (which had few physics question). On the Physical Principles, instrumentation, Examination Principles portion of the exam, I scored 74%, average was 68%.
 
To the people that both used both the ASE and Mayo DVDs - which one did you think was better?
 
To the people that both used both the ASE and Mayo DVDs - which one did you think was better?
If you have time, do both. That's what I did.
I prefer ASE slightly but the Mayo is also pretty good.
 
Hi All,
Tons of threads on Echo Board review but wanted to refresh things as there are more resources available in the past 1-2 years. What is everyone's planned test prep and timeline for prep?

Here are a few resources I've come across:

Videos:
-ASE Videos
-Mayo Clinics DVDs

Review Questions:
-Klein and Asher book
-Sorrell and Jayasuriya book
-ASE mock exam (?)

Books/Other Review:
-Edelman physics
-Otto text
-Oh text
-Feigenbaum text


What else is out there? Do people find it necessary to do both ASE Videos and Mayo Clinic DVDs? Any preference on review questions or other books?
passed as well. :soexcited: I have to give a lot of credit to threads like this which helped focus my studies on high yield resources.

with that said, my 2 cents which echo previous posts:
Mayo (or ASE) videos, Klein questions and Edelman for physics are a must
ASE guidelines - highly recommended, easy read, high yield
If you're starting early, I highly recommend going through an echo textbook (i.e otto, oh or feigenbaum) to establish a solid foundation
The test IMO was fairly straight forward and fair. The stems were surprisingly short. I didn't have any particular issues with video/image quality.
Remember, you only need to pass and I honestly think the aforementioned resources w/ the exception of an echo textbook should comfortably get you through enough of the questions to pass

On a side note, i'm impressed with those who take the echo boards after their first year. there's no way i would've been able to carve out time to study during my first year. I wonder what is the norm throughout the nation.


Hi! Congratulations on passing this exam!
I was wondering- do you have the mayo DVDs and the Edelman physics for purchase? I plan to take my exam next year. Just wondering where I can obtain all these study material..
 
Hi. I am taking Echo boards in 2 months. Just wondering where can I find ASE congenital notes??
 
I have the edelman ultrasound physics BOOK. Is that the same thing or is handouts something different, more concise maybe ?

Same question. Is there a specific Edelman Physics reference (book? notes?) that everyone is referring to?
 
Hi, thought I'd contribute to the forum here. I'm canadian trained cardiologist, I wrote the echo boards last week (week 3 into my echo fellowship).

Study material
- Klein echo self-assessment 2017 book: I went through all the questions and answers once, the physics and artifacts section twice. Very high yield, good explanations, videos were good when they were in order - probably your best resource. I started using the book 2 months before the exam.
- Mayo clinic echo board review 2016 - I watched the videos on and off for 6 months. I went through the slides quickly the weekend before the exam, was a good review.
- ASE review course - I also had the slides, I never reviewed it in detail but if I were to do it again I would use the ASE course, seems more pertinent to the exam but I think you can't go wrong with either ASE or Mayo
- Edelman physics: read 3 times, twice the weekend before the exam. The physics is very high yield
- ASE congenital review packet: good review
- M-mode article by Feigenbaum
- ASE guidelines: As a cardiology resident I constantly referred to these guidelines, and while on my echo rotation i used the iASE app so the guideline tables I am familiar with. I read through the most recent guidelines published (AS, regurgitation, contrast, stress testing in non-ischemic heart disease - I didn't have time to read through all the guidelines in details but it is probably overkill, good material to review in general for echo tho)

Overall impression: Tough exam! As an echo fellow for the past month I've been constantly reading echo throughout the day and thought I had the practical aspects down. The questions are designed to test at a higher level/esoteric knowledge, the exam assumes you have the practical knowledge/pattern recognition down, as well you know all the cutoff values and common images/doppler patterns. The physics is the toughest part so take it seriously! Will update once the score comes out.
 
Are the results out? any recommendations on the prep courses for the exam?
 
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Just got results via email today. Passed (barely).

This thread is accurate in that the most valuable resources include Mayo lectures, ASE guidelines, Klein and then Sorrell.

Tough test, but do-able. Supposedly, 1206 individuals took the 2017 test and a score of approx 60% correct was passing
 
Results are in = passed. Scored 695/86% total correct (>95 percentile), minimum passing scale score was 478.

Wish everyone luck next year
 
Hi! About the Kline book.... I have been through the reviews on Amazon, apparently the 2nd edition has many errors in its e-book. Any comments on this from past users.
 
I agree with what is being said here. The test is hard, and requires at least 2 months of solid review (I took closer to three). I think you should read through Feigenbaum once during your early training to understand core concepts. As you move onto board review I used the following:

1. Mayo videos: Most questions can be answered from these videos alone. I went through them 2-3 times, depending on the topic. They are very dense and every detail can be a potential questions, so I took some notes as I watched to help me remember. The ASE videos are of a comparable quality, I think. Pick the format you like and stick with it.
2. Klein questions: Perhaps a little more difficult and esoteric than the real exam, but not by that much. This was invaluable for picking up questions I otherwise would have missed. I went though the entire book twice.
3. Edelman's Physics: Short, to the point, and very important for understanding the basic physics. Do not ignore this!
4. Feigenbaum: I looked at pictures (rather than re-read the text) and equations/formulas. Usually, I don't go back to the core text for board review, but in this case it was helpful. The DVD has some video clips to compliment the still images in the text. It helped me recognize various abnormalities, especially rare ones. As other's said, his m-mode article is worth the time.

I looked at other qbanks and found them to be unhelpful. Otto's board review book may be useful to some, but because I was referencing Feigenbaum, I didn't need to use it. Her book does include some questions though. I looked at the Pai book for a minute, but didn't think it added much to the Klein book. If you need extra questions, it might be worth it. I agree that once I took the test, it didn't seem like extra review time would have helped. I ended up doing reasonably well, but don't know how anyone managed to get into the 90th percentile. Don't blow off this test; people who go in cold will surely fail! The review material ends up being helpful for general cardiology board review anyway.

Good luck.
 
Hi! About the Kline book.... I have been through the reviews on Amazon, apparently the 2nd edition has many errors in its e-book. Any comments on this from past users.
The errors have been fixed by thier recent update. Its realy good now.
 
Hi guys,

I have the same question posted above. Regarding Edelman physics reference above. Is it the book 4th ed or are there any notes or quizzes etc? Please clarify.
 
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