Cardiothoracic

There are 2 cardiothoracic centres within the Welsh School, at Cardiff and Swansea.

Cardiff

Advanced training posts are for 6 months extendable to a year. Trainees time will be split between clinical work and research. There will also be time allocated, usually two half days a week, to echocardiography training.

Clinical

Elective clinical time will be spent in Cardiothoracic Theatres and Cardiac Intensive Care. Cardiac Surgery at UHW is varied and challenging with a patient population that offers an unusually high percentage of high risk cases. Valve replacement and coronary artery bypass grafting make up the majority of cases but there will be ample opportunity to gain experience anaesthetising for valve repair surgery, off pump coronary artery surgery and arrhythmia surgery. There is no paediatric cardiac surgery or heart transplant surgery at UHW.
UHW is the tertiary referral centre for thoracic surgery in South Wales. Trainees will therefore also have extensive opportunity to gain experience in thoracic anaesthesia.

Trainees will be expected to become proficient in transoesophageal echocardiography (TOE) during the year. To this end arrangements are in place for the post holder to attend cardiology TOE outpatients and echo lab', under the guidance of Dr N Masani (Consultant Cardiologist). There will of course be other opportunities for TOE experience in the operating theatre.

Research

Research duties will be arranged under the close supervision of Dr Judith Hall. Research will be based on aspects of Cardiothoracic anaesthesia, either at basic science level or clinical Cardiothoracic anaesthesia.

Current research includes: