The Senior Fellowship in Advanced Non-invasive Pediatric/Congenital Cardiac Imaging at Mount Sinai Children’s Heart Center offers advanced training in non-invasive pediatric and congenital cardiac imaging. We offer one senior fellowship position per year. Training encompasses transthoracic, fetal, and transesophageal echocardiography, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and computed tomography (CT). The senior fellow learns in all modalities, and can emphasize areas of clinical and/or academic interest.
Advanced Cardiac Imaging at Mount Sinai Children’s Heart Center
Our echocardiography laboratory performs more than 8,000 examinations per year, including approximately 2,400 fetal echocardiograms. Advanced echocardiographic techniques in clinical and research use include myocardial deformation imaging, blood vortex mapping, stress and 3D echocardiography, and maternal hyperoxygenation in fetal cardiac imaging. A robust cardiac surgical and interventional program provides ample opportunity for experience with perioperative and intraprocedural transesophageal echocardiography.
Our cardiac MRI service performs approximately 180 examinations per year in patients with a wide array of congenital and acquired cardiac lesions. Our congenital cardiac CT program scans more than 50 patients per year. A pediatric anesthesiology service provides anesthesia for our young patients, or for those unable to cooperate. Active clinical collaboration is maintained with the adult advanced cardiac imaging services team.
Clinical Responsibilities
The senior fellow’s primary role is to gain experience in performance and interpretation in all modalities of advanced cardiac imaging. They will participate in almost all cardiac MRIs and CTs, including hands-on time operating the scanner, post-processing of images, and entering reports. The senior fellow can expect to routinely present advanced imaging findings at weekly medical-surgical case discussion conferences.
Exposure to echocardiography includes back-up supervision of first-year categorical cardiology fellows during night and weekend calls of their first six months of the fellowship. During periods when they are not participating in cardiac MRI or CT scans, they will often perform echocardiographic examinations, including many abnormal fetal evaluations.
The senior fellow will have ample opportunity to perform transesophageal examinations during cardiac surgery or catheter interventions.
During the later parts of the year, the senior fellow will spend more time interpreting examinations they have not participated in so they are best prepared for the responsibilities as an attending provider in an imaging lab.
Academic and Educational Opportunities
We encourage senior fellows to participate in an academic project during the year and to present any findings at academic meetings. Mount Sinai Children’s Heart Center is a leader in academic imaging, with a proven track record of producing leaders in the field.
Numerous educational forums will allow the senior fellow to present didactics and case presentations to a variety of audiences including categorical pediatric cardiology fellows, obstetric and maternal-fetal-medicine trainees, medical students, and pediatric residents. Periodic New York-area pediatric cardiac imaging conferences allow for presentations to a regional audience.