Advanced Heart Failure & Transplant Cardiology Fellowship

Our Program

The Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology Fellowship Program is a one-year training program, which begins July 1 and concludes June 30. At the end of the program, the fellow will qualify to serve as a medical director of a UNOS certified heart transplant program and be eligible for certification in the subspecialty, Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology, by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).

The Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology Fellowship is an approved Graduate Medical Education Council program at Cleveland Clinic, and an accredited fellowship subspecialty program of the ACGME. Our training and goals meet or exceed the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) and the American Society of Transplantation (AST) training guidelines. Our training program began in 1995 and well over 100 fellows have completed the program since its inception. Currently there are five positions for this one-year program. Interested individuals should have completed their formal cardiovascular training.

The program consists of the following training venues:

1. Outpatient clinic
2. Heart Failure ICU
3. Post-heart transplant/LVAD ICU and nursing floor
4. Cardiac catheterization and biopsy lab
5. Scholarly Activity

The Section of Heart Failure consists of 18 full-time heart failure/transplant cardiologists, nurse clinicians, transplant coordinators, research nurses and additional support staff. Annually, we perform 50-60 heart transplants, 50-70 -80 ventricular assist devices, 8,000-10,000 heart failure outpatient visits, over 1,000 hospital admissions and over 1,000 endomyocardial biopsies. Additionally, active programs and advanced heart failure surgery are present at Cleveland Clinic.

Teaching Staff

	Miriam S. Jacob, MD, Program Director
	Sean (Sanjeeb) Bhattacharya, MD, Associate Director

• Paulino Alvarez, MD 
• Pavan Bhat, MD
• J. Emanual Finet, MD
• Mazen Hanna, MD
• Andrew Higgins, MD
• Karlee Hoffman, MD
• Eileen Hsich, MD
• Karen James, MD
• Ran Lee, MD
• M. Trejeeve (Tre) Martyn, MD
• Maria Mountis, DO
• Andres Carmona Rubio, MD
• Randall C. Starling, MD, MPH
• Ziad Taimeh, MD
• W.H. Wilson Tang, MD

Education

Core curriculum rotations

The core curriculum rotations include the HF ICU, cardiac catheterization lab focusing on endomyocardial biopsies and diagnostic right heart catheterizations, LVAD and post-transplant inpatient service, and the outpatient rotation. In addition, there are regularly scheduled didactic sessions covering the core curriculum.

Scholarly activity

The fellow is expected to pursue research interests and projects to which adequate time is made available for protocol design and implementation, research, data analysis and writing. There are numerous research protocols that are active or in the planning stages, providing a broad-spectrum clinical research portfolio for heart failure patients. Research has been proudly presented by fellows at the AHA, ACC, ISHLT and the ATC.

All fellow are required to participate in at least one Quality Improvement project. This QI project will be presented at the end of the academic year. 

Conferences

• Journal Club: Once every month, fellows will organize and participate in a Journal Club where recent articles/topics of interest are discussed with the entire HF section.
• Patient Care Conference (PCC): Twice a month a fellow will present a current complex case and review literature related to this case.
• Fellows QAPI Meeting: Once a month fellows meet with staff physicians to discuss their Quality Improvement Projects.
• HF Research Seminar: Invited speakers (national and international) are invited to give a lecture to our group.
• HF Section Research Meeting: Heart Failure research meetings are held monthly to discuss basic and clinical research programs. Basic scientists and clinicians participate.
• Didactic Lecture Series: Twice a month there is a didactic lecture given by a faculty member within and outside our section covering topics in Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology.
• Program Director: Twice a month fellows will meet for one hour with the Program Directors (or his designee) for interactive patient-based educational sessions.
• HF Fellow Noon Conference: Each fellow will give a lecture at the General Cardiology Fellowship conference on an advanced heart failure topic.
• General Cardiology Noon Conference: Fellows may attend the daily and weekly conferences associated with the general cardiology fellowship and the cardiology section.

Application Process

All applicants need to apply through ERAS and register with the NRMP match.

All applicants will be expected to have completed Cardiovascular Medicine Fellowship training prior to starting this Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology Fellowship.

Questions?

Miriam S. Jacob, MD
Program Director, Advanced Heart Failure & Transplant Cardiology
9500 Euclid Ave., J3-4
Cleveland, OH 44195

Millie Cuevas
Program Education Coordinator
Phone: 216.636.6932
Fax: 216.445.6174
Email: cuevasm@ccf.org

• For additional GME information, please visit our Graduate Medical Education website