The Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery is affiliated to the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem.
The two-week Cardiothoracic Surgery Clerkship is an optional (elective) rotation in Surgery at the 6th year (last year) of medical school. In recent years (1998-2003) this rotation has been chosen by all medical students (90-100 students each year, 6-8 students each group). The Department is consistently receiving the highest marks in the medical students feed-back questionnaire (19-19.5, range 1-20).
The Cardiothoracic Surgery Clerkship program consists of:
- Morning rounds and bed-side teaching, conducted by senior physicians, in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit and the step-down floor.
- Daily seminars in major topics of CVS.
- Teaching in the operating room / outpatient clinic / emergency room.
- Admission of all patients by the medical students.
The students participate in all clinical and academic activities of the Department. The program covers all clinical aspects of the following topics:
- Anatomy of the chest.
- Physiology of the heart-lung machine and the extracorporeal circulation.
- Physical examination of the cardiovascular system.
- Preoperative evaluation.
- Postoperative hemodynamic monitoring.
- Cardiac output.
- Differential diagnosis of low cardiac output.
- Coronary artery bypass grafting surgery (CABG).
- Surgical approach to valvular heart diseases (aortic, mitral, tricuspid).
- Mechanical and biological valve substitutes, anti-coagulation therapy.
- Postoperative complications (hemodynamic, respiratory, renal, neurologic, infectious).
- Congenital malformations of the heart.
- Mechanical support of the failing heart.
- Heart / lung transplantation.
- Spontaneous pneumothorax.
- Surgical approach to mediastinal masses and lung cancer.
- Surgical approach to infectious diseases of the lung.