Structural heart interventions training in europe

Abstract

Background: Structural heart interventions have made major strides over the last years with the introduction of TAVR, percutaneous mitral valve repair and adult congenital heart disease procedures. Methods: As part of the SCAI SHD Early Career Task Force committee, we complied a survey of 17 questions using a Survey Monkey website. We sent invitations twice by email to 183 European program directors of interventional cardiology fellowship programs in Europe. Results: The most commonly performed procedures performed by the fellows were transseptal punctures, TAVR, BAV, PFO and BMV. For the rest of the structural procedures, each fellow performed <10 procedures during their training. Conclusion: Structural heart interventions training will keep expanding over the next years with the introduction of newer devices and techniques and accumulation of experience. Given the small number of the more rare structural procedures, it becomes apparent that we need to design national or international training networks to provide adequate training experience to all trainees.