Advanced Adult Cardiac Surgery Fellowship

Deadline to submit the required documents is March 31 of the year prior to the start date. 
Applications are reviewed in April each year for a July 1 start date the following year. 

Please submit the following to Maryam Milani:

• CV and a cover letter (with indication of the desired start date and length of fellowship)
• Copy of specialty residency degree translated into English
• 3 work-related reference letters
• Funding letter (if sponsored)
• Proof of English Languary Proficiency as per College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC guidelines

For more information on Postgraduate Fellowship at UBC, please visit: https://postgrad.med.ubc.ca/prospective-trainees/postgraduate-fellows/

For more information on CPSBC’s Fellowship licensing, please visit: https://www.cpsbc.ca/registrants/current-registrants/registration-and-licensing/student-and-graduates/postgraduate-fellow

For any questions regarding the fellowship process and the next intake, please contact the Senior Administrative Assistant of UBC Division of Cardiac Surgery: Maryam Milani (maryam.milani@ubc.ca)

The fellow will gain experience in the area of heart failure clinic/rounds, ward management, and other non-operative aspects of a cardiac surgeon while collaborating with a team of cardiologists, cardiac anesthesiologists, specialized intensivists, cardiac imaging specialists and perfusionists. They will train in the area of organ retrieval, assisting in the harvesting of hearts and lungs from donors. They will also assist in other cardiac operative cases on an elective and emergent basis and have exposure to vascular and thoracic surgery.

The program strives for 70% operative experience, 15% teaching/ research/ mentoring and 15% post-operative care. A fellow will spend  3-4 days a week in the OR and 1-2 days on non operative and research activities. The fellow will be on call 1 in 4. They will be required to travel by airplane for organ retrieval and harvesting. The fellow will be involved in roughly 25-35 transplants, 15-20 assist devices and about 20-30 ECMOs over the 12-month period. In addition to these cases, the fellow will be expected to be involved in other cardiac cases from simple to complex (ie. 50 TAVIs, 125 valve cases  per year).

Teaching and research are another focus of the fellowship. The fellow will participate and collaborate in new and ongoing research projects with researchers at the forefront of cardiac transplant surgery research. Research topics will be discussed prior to commencement of the fellowship. Fellows are required to work on multiple projects in transplant/ cardiac surgery and then present these original research papers at a major society meeting (AATS, CCS, etc.) and to publish at least two original articles.

Training Objectives

Using the latest technological surgical assists and robotics in clinical and scientific training in the management of heart failure and its surgical treatments, the fellow will be immersed in all aspects of transplant care including:

1. Surgical decision making of patient candidacy for transplant and assist devices.
2. Transplant/heart failure surgery as either 1st assist or primary surgeon
3. Post-operative care
4. Teaching and mentoring residents
5. Research
6. Presenting at rounds
7. Assist or lead additional cardiac cases such as complex valve repairs, ECMOs, TAVIs, lead extractions

The Advanced Cardiac Surgery Fellowship at the University of British Columbia is a 1-year fellowship for a cardiac surgeon who has successfully completed cardiac surgical training recognized by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

The fellowship will take place at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), which is a quaternary care hospital in Vancouver, BC.  VGH performs ~ 700 open heart procedures annually, including: coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG); aortic, mitral, and tricuspid valve surgery, including transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR); major aortic surgery, including thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR); robotically-assisted cardiac surgery; and mini-thoracotomy valve repair/replacement and atrial septal defect (ASD) repair.

The fellow will be expected to lead and complete 1-2 clinical research projects for the year that they are in the program.  The proposal for the research projects will be expected within the first month of the fellowship to allow enough time to complete the project.  Activities related to research projects may include preparation of a study protocol, including study design; submission of ethics applications, submission of grant applications, collection and interpretation of data, preparation and submission of abstracts and manuscripts, presentation of study results at local and international meetings.

Training Objectives

The objectives of the fellowship are to provide the fellow with the opportunity to be involved in all types of adult cardiac surgical procedures occurring at VGH. The skills that may be acquired include:

• CABG techniques, including harvesting of conduits
• Aortic valve replacement
• Use of the robot to harvest the internal mammary arteries
• Right and left mini-thoracotomy access to the cardiac structures
• Mitral valve repair techniques, including: neochordae, resection, sliding plasty, ring annuloplasty, commissural closure, cleft closure
• Tricuspid valve repair techniques including ring annuloplasty, neochordae, patch enlargement of leaflets, cleft closure
• Off-pump minimally-invasive direct coronary artery bypass (MIDCAB)
• Off-pump CABG
• Left atrial appendage ligation
• Aortic valve repair techniques
• Aortic root enlargement techniques
• Aortic root replacement and aortic valve-sparing root replacement surgery
• Aortic arch surgery
• Descending aortic and thoracoabdominal aortic surgery
• Thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR)
• Management of acute type A and type B dissections
• Surgery for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
• Pacemaker placement and management
• V-A ECMO
• TAVI

Supervising Surgeons

Dr. Richard Cook’s primary areas of interest are in minimally-invasive valve surgery and robotically assisted MIDCAB. He has completed ~ 350 robotically-assisted MIDCAB operations, and ~ 350 right mini-thoracotomy valve operations since he started his clinical practice at VGH in 2005.  He currently performs ~ 30 – 50 mini-thoracotomy cases/year, and 20 – 30 robotically-assisted MIDCAB operations/year.  He will be starting a randomized trial of CABG vs hybrid revascularization (robotically-assisted MIDCAB + PCI) in moderate-risk patients later in 2023.

Dr. Steve Kim underwent an advanced fellowship focusing on surgery for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy at Mayo Clinic. His clinic interests include septal reduction surgery and aortic surgery. 

Dr. Joel Price’s clinical interests include valve reconstruction and aortic and endovascular surgery. This includes general aortic surgery, aortic valve reconstruction, endovascular aortic surgery, and minimally invasive and transcatheter valve therapies. Dr. Price has a special interest in the repair of bicuspid aortic valve, including aortic valve-sparing root replacement and leaflet repair. With a background in epidemiology, Dr. Price focuses his research on outcomes in aortic and valvular heart surgery, clinical trials and simulation in surgical education.

TBA