It's really incredible when I hear somoene as young as a freshman in high school is taking courses to complete a premed program. Keep up the good work.
As others have already said, you won't be applying to med school for another 6 to 7 years and things can dramatically change in medicine -- especially in surgery.
Also your interests may change in the future. When I started med school three and a half years ago, I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. Now I'm applying to general surgery and figuring out what I want to do afterwards.
But to entertain your thoughts, I'll say the following. Everything that you've read about CTS "dying" is something echoed by many academic CT surgeons. The reason being that many of the procedures they once did, the ones they themselves perfected, fell the way of the invasive cardiologist, the interventional radiologist, and all those other people. The idea that CTS as a field "dying" is simply a call to the leaders of CTS to re-invent themselves and re-engineer their roles in cardiothoracic care. They may very well accomplish this in the future.
Typically CT surgeons nowadays, as others have stated, do mostly bypass operations. Few will venture out into doing valves, and still others will concentrate on the actual thoracic part of their training. The procedures have become fairly routine now, and a lot of CT surgeons even have resorted to hiring physician assistants to do the opening and closing, in order to streamline the process I suppose.
No matter what happens to CTS, you'll always be able to go into the field. Sometimes it may be more difficult to find a job than at other times, but this is a chance you take with any field from internal medicine to surgery.
Do what interests you in life. Don't do it for the lifestyle because you'll grow tired of it eventually. My fellow fourth-year med students may not agree with this philosophy, especially those who are going into certain "lifestyle" fields, but that's something you'll decide for yourself.
When I decided on General Surgery and not Ortho, I was told by a number of people that I was crazy and that I had no desire for a life. They were correct in part because I had no desire for a life where I was not doing something that interested me.
You should probably ask an actual surgical resident about the life of a CT surgeon, or ask a CT surgeon yourself. If you want my opinion, that of a person who's heard it from probably a fifth or sixth person perspective, CTS is notorious for its long hours and many emergencies. It's also known for its monotony because of the repetitive procedures day in and day out. CT surgeons are known for their hot tempers and their scalpel flinging. CT surgeons are known for their "God complexes" and their general meanness.
Though this is all I've heard of CT surgeons, the ones that I've met so far have been great, down-to-earth people who are incredibly brilliant. They may be a little pushy at times, but their patients are pretty critical and things need to get done when they need to be done.
Good luck to you. If you have any questions on admissions or med school, don't hesitate to email me.
