ABSTRACT
During the first 2 years of the coronavirus-19 pandemic, many changes and innovations occurred to overcome the challenges associated with the pandemic and improve cardiovascular training. This review highlights the literature on the pandemic response regarding cardiovascular fellowship education and identifies areas of need to ensure future opportunities for fellows to achieve competency and career advancement. Specifically, we describe the recent changes to the four cornerstones of cardiovascular training: core content education, procedural training, career development, and the well-being of trainees.
Subject(s)
Cardiovascular Diseases/diagnosis , Cardiovascular Diseases/therapy , Education, Medical/standards , Education, Medical/trends , Students, Medical/psychology , Coronavirus Infections/epidemiology , Fellowships and Scholarships , Humans , PandemicsABSTRACT
Teleproctoring can be used successfully in performing challenging and innovative structural heart interventions using sophisticated technology that allows real-time bidirectional audiovisual communication with digital transmission of live videos and direct observation of the operative field by a remote proctor. The authors share an illustrative case that was performed amid the coronavirus disease-2019 global pandemic that led to travel restrictions to limit spread of the virus. Teleproctoring has future implications beyond the current global health crisis to facilitate rapid dissemination and exchange of knowledge for ultimately helping patients around the globe.
Subject(s)
Betacoronavirus , Cardiac Surgical Procedures/methods , Coronavirus Infections/complications , Heart Diseases/surgery , Monitoring, Physiologic/methods , Pandemics , Pneumonia, Viral/complications , Telemedicine/methods , COVID-19 , Coronavirus Infections/epidemiology , Heart Diseases/complications , Heart Diseases/diagnosis , Humans , Pneumonia, Viral/epidemiology , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
Transcatheter mitral valve repair with MitraClip (Abbott) is largely an elective procedure. The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has posed challenges to health care systems; in many cases elective interventions have been curtailed. Patients with severe mitral regurgitation (MR) and cardiogenic shock are high-risk surgical candidates and at risk of a poor outcome without intervention. The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Society of Coronary Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) recently proposed joint guidance on triage of structural heart disease (SHD) interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We present two illustrative cases of severe MR and cardiogenic shock that were successfully treated with MitraClip amidst the COVID-19 pandemic with good outcomes at short term follow-up.