Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine

While caring for the patients with cardiac disease is the focus of our mission, we excel at teaching the next generation of cardiac anesthesiologists. Our goal is to train the future academic leaders in our field. 

Given the high acuity of our patient population, graduates from the Tufts Medical Center Anesthesia training programs are exceptionally well prepared to handle any clinical scenario. Residents in our Anesthesiology Residency Program gain early exposure both two and three-dimensional echocardiography. By the third and final year of training, we work with residents to teach them how to not only induce critically ill patients, but also separate from cardiopulmonary bypass. Surgeons at Tufts MC collaborate with us to allow both residents and advanced cardiac anesthesiology fellows to conduct the separation.  Journal clubs are held once per month, and allow residents to learn to critically review literature. Residents have been consistently accepted into the top cardiac anesthesiology training programs across the country. 

We also have an outstanding cardiac anesthesia fellowship program at Tufts Medical Center. Fellows, like residents, quickly become very comfortable caring for the most complex cardiac cases in the region. What is considered an index case by many centers is a daily routine for our fellows. Fellow training in echocardiography is on a post-graduate level and by the end of their time at Tufts MC, they are experts. We not only have a 100% pass rate on the boards with our fellows, but they do exceptionally well. Our goal is not only to train our fellows, but also to help them start their academic careers. Our fellows have consistently obtain positions in the cities where they want to live and at the institutions where they want to work. 

The Division of Cardiac Anesthesiology at Tufts Medical Center embraces a culture of innovation and always search for new ways to improve. A key aspect of this cultural ethos is research. 

We have been particularly excited about our work to measure the impact of a new drug that has decreased our blood product utilization in heart transplants. Similarly, we have invested in new technology that we are testing to keep patients warm, decrease infection rates and use of blood products. Significant work is also being doing with intra-operative cardiac imaging. We have also attracted the attention of multi-institutional trials.  

An example of this is our involvement in the Levosimendan trial in which we are one of the leading centers in the country. Importantly, we involve everyone in our academic efforts. This includes not only attending staff, but also residents, fellows and anesthesia technicians. 

We also embrace multidisciplinary collaboration with cardiology and cardiac surgery. Over this last year, our efforts resulted in over a dozen abstracts to the 2017 annual meeting of the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists and multiple peer reviewed publications.