SCAI awards 46 grants for interventional cardiology training f...( (WASHINGTON D.C. April 29 2008) Th...),Health

(WASHINGTON, D.C. April 29, 2008) The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) this week announced grant awards to 46 institutions through the SCAI Interventional Cardiology Fellows-in-Training Grant Program. The multi-year, multi-million dollar program, launched in late 2007, awards grants to medical centers to help pay the salary and benefits for physicians training in interventional cardiology.

Currently, approximately 15 percent of interventional cardiology training spots at accredited U.S. academic training programs go unfilled each year, because many programs lack the financial resources to fill all positions approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). As the population ages and rates of cardiovascular disease continue to increase, the demand for interventional cardiologists is expected to increase. The Fellows-in-Training program, developed with generous support of the Boston Scientific Foundation and the Cordis Cardiac and Vascular Institute, aims to close this gap by providing financial assistance to selected training programs to fill open positions.

The field of interventional cardiology continues to expand with new, minimally invasive treatments. At the same time, the number of Americans living with heart disease continues to increase, says Dr. Joseph Babb, an SCAI past president and chair of the Fellows-in-Training committee. The Fellows-in-Training program helps medical centers meet the growing demand for skilled interventional cardiologists by providing funding to institutions with a proven track record for high-quality interventional cardiology education.

Grant recipients were chosen by an SCAI committee of interventional cardiology leaders, who evaluated applications based on the centers record for producing high-quality interventional cardiologists and demonstrated need for financial support. Institutions were assessed based on a set of metrics that include
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