Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship

Experience

Fellows treat arrhythmia patients in both inpatient and outpatient settings to observe, diagnose, manage, and judge the effectiveness of treatments for these patients. Fellows are given the opportunity to assume continuing and increasing responsibility for both acutely and chronically ill patients to learn the natural history of a wide variety of cardiac arrhythmias and how to treat them.

Fellows will achieve experience in outpatient management of arrhythmias through a variety of outpatient clinics. These will include rotation among the EP faculty members’ clinics, with educational exposure to implantable device management (pacemaker, ICD, ILR, and central sleep apnea devices), and participation in multidisciplinary clinics, including postoperative arrhythmia clinics, hybrid AF management clinic (both of which utilize a team approach with cardiovascular surgery), and left atrial appendage closure clinic. This will afford the fellow in training the opportunity to observe and manage patients longitudinally and to gain experience with device follow-up and management.

Procedures

Throughout training, fellows have increasing responsibility in invasive and non-invasive procedures in the EP laboratory.

EP studies and ablations

• Diagnostic EP studies
• Arrhythmia mapping
• Catheter ablation for supraventricular tachycardias and ventricular tachycardias
• Radiofrequency and cryoablation for atrial fibrillation
• Radiofrequency ablation of atypical atrial flutter
• Ablation of idiopathic ventricular tachycardia
• Ablation of scar based ventricular tachycardia, epicardial and Impella assisted
• Vein of Marshall EtOH ablation

Cardiac rhythm devices

• Transvenous single, dual and biventricular pacemakers
• Transvenous single, dual and biventricular defibrillators
• Leadless pacemakers
• Subcutaneous defibrillators
• Laser and mechanical extraction of devices
• Left atrial appendage closure device
• Tilt table testing

Conferences

Trainees are provided with ample didactic input to make the most of their clinical experience. Fellows are expected to make a concerted effort to attend as many conferences as possible.

• Intracardiac Electrogram Conference
• Didactic lectures including anatomy, basic electrophysiology, biophysics of ablation, device implantation, ablation of arrhythmias
• EKG conference
• Cardiology Grand Rounds
• Cardiology Echocardiography Conference
• Cardiology Catheterization Conference
• Cardiology Section or M&M Meeting

Research

We encourage interested fellows to engage in clinical research as well. A meaningful experience could include discussion and formulation of hypothesis and study design with goal to publish in a peer-reviewed journal.

There is a weekly research conference and a monthly conference where investigator-initiated and industry-sponsored trials are discussed. This conference includes discussion on how research is explained to patients and applied to patient care.

In addition to one-on-one coaching from faculty, fellows learn the basics of research through a dedicated monthly research lecture.