Cardiothoracic anesthesiology

Cardiothoracic anesthesiology is a subspeciality of the medical practice of anesthesiology devoted to the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative care of adult and pediatric patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery and related invasive procedures.

It deals with the anesthesia aspects of care related to surgical cases such as open heart surgery, lung surgery, and other operations of the human chest. These aspects include perioperative care with expert manipulation of patient cardiopulmonary physiology through precise and advanced application of pharmacology, resuscitative techniques, critical care medicine, and invasive procedures. This also includes management of the cardiopulmonary bypass (heart-lung) machine, which most cardiac procedures require intraoperatively while the heart undergoes surgical correction.

All anesthesiologists obtain either a Doctor of Medicine (MD) or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree prior to entering post-medical school graduate medical education. After satisfactory completion of an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) or American Osteopathic Association (AOA) accredited one year internship in either internal medicine or surgery and a three-year residency program in all subspecialties of anesthesiology, formal advanced training in Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology is available via a one-year fellowship.[1][2].

The first Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology fellowship was formed at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1971. [3] Since then, Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology has become an ACGME approved fellowship (2007), and there are 57 ACGME accredited programs and 183 match positions for current academic year(2015–2016).

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