Is cardiology primarily a procedural OR non-procedural fellowship?

[Jesus1]

Straight to the point;
a)For folks currently in cardio fellowship (no intention of interventional), would you consider cards to be primarily procedural or non-procedural?
b)If procedural, what kinds of procedures are done routinely in fellowship?
c)Can you build a cardio career that is NOT focused on procedures?

Thanks in advance.

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[throwaway1000000]

gen cards don't do much after fellowships

 

[aafisahar]

Straight to the point;
a)For folks currently in cardio fellowship (no intention of interventional), would you consider cards to be primarily procedural or non-procedural?
b)If procedural, what kinds of procedures are done routinely in fellowship?
c)Can you build a cardio career that is NOT focused on procedures?

Thanks in advance.

You can be anything from a cath jockey who spends 80%of his time standing in the lab to pseudo radiologist who reads imaging 80% of the time.

 

[Rocher]

Primarily non-procedural but there are quite a few procedural months. I'd say at least 10 months of my 36 month fellowship is procedural (cath and TEE), but it can be significantly more if you want to do IC or EP.

In fellowship you'll learn how to do diagnostic left and right heart caths, may place a few balloon pumps and stents depending on where you are at, and will learn TEE. You can definitely have a non-procedural career, though if you're anything like me you may realize that the procedures are the most fun and go from thinking about non-procedural fields to doing a procedure-heavy subspecialty.

 

[MyTachyBradyHeart]

Straight to the point;
a)For folks currently in cardio fellowship (no intention of interventional), would you consider cards to be primarily procedural or non-procedural?
b)If procedural, what kinds of procedures are done routinely in fellowship?
c)Can you build a cardio career that is NOT focused on procedures?

Thanks in advance.

1) Fellowship is 2/3 non-procedural and 1/3 procedural, which mostly involves time doing cath and TEE. I am not counting TTE or supervising stress tests as "procedural". Some programs will have you spend time in the EP lab but unless you devote significant time 3rd year, you won't be even first assist on most EP cases.

2) See above.

3) Most cardiology careers are nonprocedural. The most procedural subspecialties are interventional, EP, and structural TEE. Even if you do those, you will have clinic, some inpt nonprocedural responsibilities, and admin/research/teaching. Depending on your contract, you can expect 2-4 days in the cath/EP/TEE labs, which gives you anywhere from 40-70% procedural time. EP/TEE attendings will never get above 70%, as they have to take care of their gen cardiology patients, their valve disease patients, and their post-device/ablation patients in clinic. Interventional cardiologist can spend >70% of their time cathing, but they will have little clinic time and have to rely on referrals to justify their existence. This is limited only to the busy PP groups or large academic medical centers where there are other revenue streams.