About the Fellowship

The Texas Heart Institute Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology Fellowship Program at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center (BSLMC) was founded in 2004. Since its inception, over 25 national and international fellows have completed the program, and we remain one of the busiest left ventricular assist device and heart transplant programs in the United States today.

Annually the program performs 35-45 heart transplants, 60-70 Left ventricular assist device implantations, 5,000-6,000 heart failure outpatient visits, over 1,000 hospital admissions, and more than 300 endomyocardial biopsies. Active programs in advanced heart failure surgery and structural heart disease at BSLMC provide unparalleled opportunities for our fellows to learn and interact with our faculty, THI Professional teaching staff, and heart failure patients.

The Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology Fellowship is an approved Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Council program at Baylor College of Medicine and has been an accredited fellowship subspecialty program of the ACGME since 2015. Our training and goals meet or exceed the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) and the American Society of Transplantation (AST) training guidelines. The one-year fellowship begins July 1 and concludes June 30 the following year. At the end of the program, the fellows qualify to serve as medical directors of a UNOS-certified heart transplant program. They are eligible for certification in the Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology subspecialty by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).

Our Team

The Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology Fellowship teaching staff consist of full-time ABIM board-certified advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologists, advanced practice providers, heart transplant coordinators, LVAD coordinators and additional support staff. The Program Director is Andrew B. Civitello, MD, FACC.

Curriculum

Our program is a unique collaboration between the Texas Heart Institute (THI), Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center (BSLMC), and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), which benefits trainees throughout the course of the year.

Fellows will attend several regularly scheduled conferences (RSC) in addition to rotations in the following training venues: outpatient heart failure, transplant and LVAD clinic, heart failure ICU, post-heart transplant/LVAD ICU and nursing floor, cardiac catheterization and biopsy lab, and research. Additionally, there are many opportunities for fellows to conduct research, including clinical trials and device development, among THI’s multiple research laboratories. Fellows also have the opportunity to participate as reviewers for the Texas Heart Institute Journal.