Surgery Education - Cardiothoracic Surgery Residency Six-Year Training Program

Program description | Yearly Program Format Tables (pdf) | Current residents

John H. Calhoon, MD, Program Director | Biosketch
V. Seenu Reddy, MD, MBA, Associate Program Director | Biosketch

The faculty of UTHSCSA's Cardiothoracic Surgery Division welcomes your interest in the six year Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery program. This is a newly organized, concentrated course of study specifically designed to efficiently provide the very best training through an integrated, multidisciplinary, competency-based approach.

Each of our faculty chose the cardiothoracic surgery career path because it offers the opportunity to significantly help others while providing a comfortable life for our families and us. As we continue to practice this rigorous and challenging medical specialty daily, we have noted that projections suggest a shortage of CT Surgeons in the next decade. While we cannot predict the exact landscape of CT surgery, it seems clear our skill set will remain in demand.

We are therefore pleased to be one of the early medical schools approved to offer to interested and focused medical students a six-year curriculum in Cardiothoracic Surgery. This program offers a substantial savings in matriculation time (six years rather than seven, eight years or more) for the motivated medical school graduate to learn, master, and then to perform the delicate and crucial art of heart surgery and other essential thoracic operative procedures. It also affords the opportunity of supervised, yet hands-on cardiac surgery and thoracic surgery experience in the third year.

This is a small program with highly individualized instruction and close, daily interaction with faculty and senior residents, which is designed to address the strengths and weaknesses of each student in a collegial, yet challenging environment and with constant goal of producing surgeons of the highest caliber.

The program is divided into an introductory period of two years, and a final, more hands-on operative experience consisting of progressive responsibility and skills development across all of CT surgical practices to include adult cardiac, general thoracic, heart and lung transplantation, VAD implantation, endovascular techniques, and congenital heart surgery. Significant critical care time, patient management, and a fairly unique exposure to pacemakers and ICD implantation are also a core of our experience. In the first two years, we have been able to add in protected time in the cath lab, cardiology imaging section, basic radiology imaging, pulmonary service, and a couple of months of simulation and/or research to allow our residents to plan a line of, usually clinical, investigation that they can pursue throughout their time with us. We hope this will allow for a number of publications and a well-supported research effort to involve but not inundate our residents. The final two years will be similar to the current junior and senior years of our current two-year program. The primary rotations will be either adult cardiac or adult thoracic with the emphasis on mastery of the key operations fundamental to our specialty and an opportunity to develop further skills in endovascular, advanced pulmonary or advanced cardiac surgical arenas. As the student progresses through each rotation, the focus upon cardiothoracic operative practice and perspective intensifies. In this way specialized clinical work and intensive mentoring work together to achieve the objective of Board Certification upon graduation.

As one can see above, built into year one are rotations that cater to the development of a complete CT Surgeon. The residents start on CT to meet all our faculty and learn our goals and principles and participate in our conferences early on. From this point, they obtain a nice exposure to a variety of GS rotations, spend time on transplantation, and the Anesthesia service where they are taught the basics of intubation, line placements, and anesthetic management. They receive more time on bread and butter CT surgery at our VA, and then spend some time in Pulmonary medicine learning about bronchoscopy and PFT's, have a month of research elective, and some more vascular and CT time.

In the second year, we have worked with radiology to have a month devoted to chest imaging, and they spend most of their time in transplant, critical care, vascular, or bread and butter GS rotations. Specific rotation in cardiology for heart failure and echo are prescribed. At the end of these two years, they are brought into the CT fold almost exclusively for graduated development and maturation of technical and clinical judgment skills on the various CT sites. They do have important time in year three on pediatric surgery and an opportunity to work in the radiology interventional suite for a month as well.

Current Cardiothoracic Surgery Residents

Lucas M. Duvall, MD | Email | Biosketch
Dr. Duvall completed his undergraduate education at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA prior to completing medical school at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, LA. A general surgery residency was also completed at the LSUHSC-Shreveport campus. He will be entering a residency in Cardiothoracic Surgery with long term plans to practice adult cardiac, thoracic and peripheral vascular surgery.

HelenMarie Merritt, DO | Email | Biosketch
Dr. Merritt has been a leader throughout her medical training, serving on multiple boards and committees in the American and Texas Medical Associations. She is a member of Sigma Sigma Phi, a national service honor society, and she has received recognition for hours dedicated to volunteering, including the TOUCH award for service excellence. She enjoys being active, competing in tennis tournaments, and road biking.

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