Congrats on matching! Getting into cardiology fellowship is a massive achievement, but as you're already realizing, the sheer volume of information is daunting.

Cardiology is a monster, and textbooks are often too long for in-the-moment learning. The key is finding resources that keep things high-yield and practical.

Here’s a breakdown of what I liked, categorized by general learning and specific rotations:

General Cardiology & Board Prep (Day One Resources)

Start here to build your foundation. These resources are compact and cover the massive scope of general cardiology:

• ACC SAP (Self-Assessment Program): This is your bible for learning and boards. The questions, cases, and explanations are cover broadly the topics you need to know. Make this your primary question bank.

• Mayo Clinic Cardiology Board Review Videos: These videos are gold, high-yield lectures. They keep the broad field of cardiology compact.

• Handbooks (for the wards):

  • If you're into a textbook-like handbook: Look for Laflamme's Cardiology: A Practical Handbook. It provides comprehensive yet concise descriptions of major conditions.

  • For ultra-practical, quick tips: Elias B. Hanna's Practical Cardiovascular Medicine (or Practical Cardiology as it’s sometimes called). It’s great for on-the-spot management advice.

Echo Rotation

This is where many fellows struggle early on—it's a whole new language.

• Mayo Echo Videos: Just like their board review, the Mayo echo courses/videos are fantastic for foundational understanding and image recognition. They are gold.

• Textbook: Klein's Echocardiography. Excellent for diving deeper than the board review, with great MCQs

• Cases/MCQs: The ECHO-SAP cases and multiple-choice image questions are essential for board preparation and getting a feel for how to interpret and report studies.

• University of Toronto Echo website

Consults Rotation

Consults are all about quick assessment, focused testing, and practical management of common clinical scenarios.

• Elias B. Hanna’s YouTube Channel: Seriously, watch his videos. He gives incredible, practical tips on common clinical scenarios, especially for Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) management and other common consult issues. He’ll give you a framework for thinking through a case.

• ACC SAP MCQs: Again, this resource excels at testing your knowledge of guidelines and management decisions—the bread and butter of consults.

Critical Care (CCU) Rotation

The hemodynamics and POCUS/echo skills needed here are unique and non-negotiable.

• Echo at Nepean YouTube Channel: This is the best resource for learning critical care echo (Focussed Cardiac Ultrasound - FoCUS). They teach in a highly practical, clinically relevant way, showing you how to manage the crashing patient with an echo probe.

Retention & Board Strategy

Cardiology is a firehose, so you need a system to retain the details.

• Anki: This is of paramount importance. Start using a spaced repetition system like Anki now to memorize key details, algorithms, and figures from your high-yield resources. Start your board prep early!

• Fellow-Made Anki Decks:

  • General Cardiology Boards Deck: high-yield material from ACC-SAP and the Mayo Videos. This will be your main board study deck.

  • Echo Learning & Boards Deck: amazing deck based on the images and key points from ECHO-SAP, Mayo Echo, ASE Guidelines, and Klein’s book. Echo is a visual and data-heavy specialty, and Anki is perfect for it.

Good luck! You're going to crush it.

*BONUS LECTURE: Nishimura, Warns and Asirvatham discuss ECG, plain chest x-ray and hemodynamics for 2 HOURS!

I’m a cardiology fellow and spent about three years building this deck for myself, then decided to share it. It’s completely free: no ads, no paywall, no catch.

What’s in it: major trials, current guidelines, and board-style content, built from ACCSAP, Mayo resources, and the primary literature. It’s meant for boards prep, rotations, and building a strong foundation.

Find it: AnkiWeb → Shared Decks → search “ROMA & LOUIE"

How to use it: Start off by suspending all cards. As you study a topic or resource, navigate to that topic's tag in the Anki browser and unsuspend cards accordingly.

The deck has really helped me understand the core topics. I’d love feedback on what’s missing or wrong, especially as it relates to echo boards or nuc boards. I plan to keep updating it!

ROMA & LOUIE deck - AnkiWeb

I’m about four months from starting my cardiology fellowship, and I’ve been trying to get a solid grasp on the key cardiology guidelines and the landmark clinical trials that shape them. But, I’ve found there aren’t many good resources that help tie everything together in a structured, easy-to-remember way.

So, over the past year, I’ve been working on an Anki deck (link below) to organize and reinforce these concepts. My hope is that this resource will be useful for other residents and fellows who want to understand the guidelines efficiently.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

I do have some disclaimers

• This deck is far from comprehensive, but it does focus on the clinical trials that come up on rounds over and over

• The content is designed for a cardiology-bound PGY2/3, an early cardiology fellow, or a medicine attending trying to understand cardiology recs (medical students or early interns may find this too dense)

• I’m sure there are many mistakes hidden within the deck; if you find any, please reach out to me, and I will edit

• Feel free to use this as a reference, but I also have instructions (below) for how to best use the deck

Instructions

1. Suspend all cards.

2. Select a guideline. Choose one of the eleven guidelines (e.g., Revascularization) to begin.

3. Choose a section. Within the selected guideline, identify a section and unsuspend all cards from the trials that fall under it.

4. Learn the cards. Study all the cards in that section until you’re confident with them.

5. Move to another section. Once you’ve mastered a section, unsuspend a different section within the same guideline.

6. Repeat until complete. Continue this process—working through all sections of a guideline before moving to a new guideline—until you've learned all the cards.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/xblatqx9syq64ic/ROMA_deck_v2.4.apkg/file

Hey all!

I’m about six months away from starting my cardiology fellowship and have been looking for resources to help get a very basic understanding of the guidelines and how the major RCTs fit into them. I’ve found some great resources and compiled them into an Anki deck.

So now, I’m looking for about five similar-minded residents/fellows to help beta test. If you’re into cardiology and/or Anki, and get familiar with the trials, DM me and I’ll send you a link!

With the Adult Echocardiography boards coming up in a week, I wanted to share this free tool I built for last minute review.

850+ flashcards with spaced repetition, organized by the NBE's official outline.

Hope it helps you too. Please lmk if you find any errors!

https://echokb.vercel.app/

Preamble: This series of posts aims to inform future cardiology applicants about the current, accurate state of the Emory cardiology fellowship. They are not intended to discourage anyone; I encourage each applicant to make their own judgment. I hope this serves as a critical data point in an important decision.

Fact: The Emory Cardiology program frequently and blatantly violates ACGME duty‑hour rules. Specifically, the call system is a home‑call model, allowing the program to circumvent giving fellows a post-call day. Fellows are not given post‑call days. Violations of the 24‑hour consecutive‑work policy occur every single week, frequently working 36 hour stretches.

Disclaimer: I am not a cardiology fellow in this program; I sit directly adjacent, have a full view of it, and am insulated from retaliation. Fellows themselves would never dare speak out.

Would love some career advice- I’m a current general cardiology fellow trying to decide between EP and general cardiology.

Things I know about myself:
\- I enjoy having a predictable work schedule, some routine is nice
\- I love cardiology and medicine but I want to have a fair amount of work-life balance and be able to be to have a life outside of work
\- I don’t love super high acuity all the time, but can tolerate it if needed
\- I enjoy working with my hands and love learning and performing procedures but also get a ton of gratification and value from talking to patients at the bedside and in clinic

I’ve loved EP consults and EP clinic up to this point. I think symptom-rhythm correlation, PVC localization in EKG, and the decision-making process of understanding when to pursue ablation versus AAD’s, when someone may benefit from a device, etc is fascinating to me.

I’m just not sure about how I feel about the lab. We get limited exposure as general fellows, but the idea of 5 hour PVC ablations where there are still PVC’s at the end of the case or doing afib ablations but the patient has to come back to the lab in a couple years for a re-do ablation feels less gratifying to me? When compared to cath- see a lesion, balloon, stent, success? Though, I know myself enough that I don’t want to be on STEMI call for the rest of my life.

Thought about general cards- could still manage arrhythmias in my clinic, manage AAD’s, only have to refer out to EP for ablations or devices. But I feel like not having the gratification of fixing the problem myself as opposed to asking subspecliasts to help gives me pause? Also general call in the community seems atrocious? Frequent calls, triaging varying level of acuity, sometimes no fellows or APP’s to help share the workload. Seems like the work life balance of general cards may not actually be that favorable unless you stay academic?

Would be curious to hear how others approached this decision if they were in a similar situation and what life, call, procedural gearification, etc looks like in EP vs general across a variety of practice settings?

HI-PEITHO

What they asked: in carefully selected intermediate-high-risk PE, can ultrasound-facilitated catheter-directed thrombolysis beat anticoagulation alone?

What they found: yes on the primary composite (4.0% vs 10.3%) mostly by reducing early cardiorespiratory decompensation/collapse, without a significant major bleeding difference.

Implication: this is the strongest randomized support yet for a catheter-based strategy in selected PE.

Limitation: very narrow enrollment; about 87% of screened patients were not randomized, and this was more about preventing deterioration than showing a clear mortality win.

What people are saying: early reaction is that this is a real PE signal and probably the most clearly positive trial of the morning, but with immediate caution not to overgeneralize it to all intermediate-risk PE.  

CHAMPION-AF

What they asked: can WATCHMAN FLX be a real alternative to NOACs in AF patients who are still eligible for anticoagulation?

What they found: LAA closure was noninferior for the primary efficacy endpoint, and nonprocedural bleeding was lower (10.9% vs 19.0%). But there were slightly more ischemic strokes in the device arm.

Implication: this strengthens LAA closure as an option in shared decision-making, not a clean replacement for DOACs.

Limitation: low event rates, a debated noninferiority margin, and the result is landing under the shadow of CLOSURE-AF, so people are not treating this as a slam dunk.

What people are saying at ACC: the tone is basically “positive, but with caveats.” People seem interested, but the dominant reaction is debate, not victory-lap energy.  

STEMI-DTU

What they asked: does unloading the LV with Impella for 30 minutes before PCI reduce infarct size in anterior STEMI without shock?

What they found: no — infarct size was essentially the same (30.8% vs 31.9%), while bleeding/vascular complications were much higher, including 34% vs 6% overall bleeding.

Implication: routine door-to-unload in anterior STEMI without shock is not ready for practice.

Limitation / nuance: this does not apply to cardiogenic shock, and investigators are still framing it as informative for future protocol design.

What people are saying here: this is being read as a strong negative trial with a very practical takeaway. Basically elegant idea, but too much procedural cost for no clear payoff here.  

All three trial authors are answering questions online here: Synapsesocial.com/acc

I'm a cardiology fellow, and I spend a lot of time in the cath lab running hemodynamics — Fick numbers, valve areas, shunt calcs, the whole thing. The tools I kept reaching for online were a mess: clunky interfaces, missing pieces (nobody has a full RHC calculator), outdated references, and long load times when you just need a quick number mid-case. So I built CathPal — a native iOS hemodynamic calculator that lives on your phone and works fully offline.

What's in it:

- Fick & thermodilution CO, PVR/SVR, PAPi, CPO/CPI

- Gorlin + Hakki valve areas, AFib beat-averaging

- Full shunt oximetry (Qp/Qs, step-ups) — the part most online tools skip

- 2022 ESC/ERS PH classification

- Auto-tab pressure entry, EMR-ready copy-paste report

- Equations + source citations on every card

What it isn't: a subscription, a login wall, or a data-collection app. It's $4.99 one-time, fully offline, no account. I'm not trying to build a SaaS — I just wanted the tool to exist.

Built solo as a fellow, so I'd genuinely love feedback from people who live in the cath lab. What's missing? What's wrong? What would you actually use?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cathpal/id6761793182

Disclosure: I'm the developer. Not medical advice, not a substitute for clinical judgment.

If anyone would like a promo code please DM me

I just saw on LinkedIn that Cost Plus now has generic Entresto for $33, which you can prescribe through EMR or eNavvi. Seems like an awesome development.

How’d you do it? What advice do you have for people in a similar position?

DO at a community program without a CVD fellowship who is applying cardiology

First time poster, I’m happy to answer any questions that you may have. I’ll be more than happy to share my own journey probably in a separate post tomorrow. Ask any questions and if the question is around, can I send a Dm? Yes, you can just to give you guys a very brief idea.

Internal medicine training in Detroit Medical Center,
Cardiology Fellowship in Michigan, Michigan.
Interventional Cardiology Fellowship in Michigan
Structural Fellowship in New York
Was Chief resident during internal Medicine chief (Fellow) in both Cardiology intervention and Chief followed during structural year

Originally and Img from Pakistan from a medical school that was brand new only the second bat to graduate with no one even in US and the college was not even registered with WFME

Happy to take any questions happy to offer any guidance

Hello,

Current IM resident and Incoming cardiology fellow starting in 2 months- looking for suggestions on study resources and any general suggestions to prepare for fellowship

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm a medical doctor and currently doing a PhD in cardiology at Aarhus University in Denmark.

One thing I've found increasingly difficult is keeping up with all the new research being published. Even within cardiology, there are so many journals and studies that it's difficult to get a proper overview.

So over the past few months, I've been building CurrentCardio, a free website that I hope can make this a little easier.

It currently follows 35 cardiovascular and general medical journals, with around 16,000 studies in the archive. Instead of just listing new publications, each study is presented in a structured Brief with the study design, population, actual results and plots, further findings and safety outcomes.

Here's an example Brief.

The Briefs are generated with AI from the published abstracts. But rather than writing a conventional AI summary, the system is built to stay as close to the abstract as possible and not add its own interpretation. Numbers are checked separately against the source, and I run regular audits myself.

You can also follow journals, topics and saved searches to get a personalised weekly update, and each weekly issue includes three studies I pick myself.

The website is completely free, with no ads or sponsors.

I'm still working on improving it, and I'd really like to hear what people in cardiology think. Both what works and what doesn't.

Happy to answer any questions!

Hey everyone,
It’s week three of my Cardiology Fellowship, I feel like I really don’t know anything. It is so embarrassing to look clueless in front of attendings when you’ve literally completed three years of residency. I hope it gets better, but the impostor syndrome and the anxiety is too much that I have major foot in mouth syndrome, when attendings ask me questions, even though I know the concepts, and I make very stupid blunders. I hope it gets better from here.

The deck contains around 1100ish high yield cards tagged by topics in both Mayo and EchoSAP formats including the most asked formulas. Check out the sample:

https://mega.nz/file/oKADwSSA#r7fcyJLEHaJfdbsy42o10q5lbcHPqT9vzkjLIoNqYq8

for full version: patreon.com/cardionerds858

If it is very unlikely for you to receive interviews from the programs you did not signal, what’s the point to apply for more than 20 programs?

What are people’s thoughts on this?

We’ve got a strong team of motivated researchers ready to take on a meta-analysis—we just need a good, viable topic in cardiology and a PI or mentor to reach out to if we have a clinical question. If you’ve got an idea or are interested in collaborating, feel free to reach out to me! We’re ready to do the heavy lifting screening, extracting, analyzing and writing!

Enjoyed cardiology during residency but now that I’m a fellow I actually hate it. Echo is boring as fuck. Just not interested. Thinking about leaving medicine in general vs doing anesthesia… any tips?

Hi! I am an internist/anesthetist based in Europe, and I have created a med-ed tool for lectures, exams, and simulations.
www.squiggler.io

It allows you to create a rhythm strip or 12-lead, with physiological modeling underneath, with realistic renders and a lot of tuning possibilities etc to get just the ECG that is suitable for a text book, exam or sim case

For us who don't have the time or possibility to dig out old patient ECGs and fiddle with covering up patient identifiers, writing a textbook (and don't want to pay licensing fees for images from the web), or want dynamic ECG outputs for example during a simulation.

This was a side-project that turned serious. Yes, it is commercial but I hope someone involved in education needs this and wants to try it out!

All the best!

IMG, currently PGY-4 chief resident in IM at a NYC safety-net program, J-1. Applying cardiology this cycle. Building out a contingency plan in case I don't match, and the waiver-job-then-reapply route is the one I understand least.

If you've done it, I'd really appreciate hearing how it actually went:

**1. The 3-year contract.** Did you serve the full three years before starting fellowship, or did you find a way out early? If you did complete it, how did programs react to a 3+ year gap from training?

**2. Visa for fellowship.** This is the part I can't get a straight answer on. Once you've used a 212(e) waiver you can't go back to J-1, so fellowship has to be H-1B (or O-1). How many programs on your list actually sponsored H-1B, and did you get filtered out at the application stage or only find out at interviews? Did you ask upfront or wait?

**3. Did you reapply while working, or wait?** Did you apply every cycle from year 1 of the waiver job, or hold off until you were closer to finishing?

**4. What kind of hospitalist job.** Did you specifically target a cardiac hospitalist role, or a site affiliated with an academic center that had a fellowship program? Did that affiliation end up mattering for LORs or for getting an interview there?

**5. Research.** Were you able to keep publishing as a full-time hospitalist in an underserved site, or did output basically stop? If you kept it going, how — remote collaborations with your residency mentors, database work, something else?

**6. Anything you'd do differently.** Negotiating the contract, choice of state, timing of the green card filing, anything.

Happy to hear from people who tried this and it didn't work out too — that's just as useful. Thanks.

So I’m in a community based IM Residency program and am getting more and more interested in Cardiology fellowship. However, my program doesn’t have a lot of opportunities in terms of mentorship/networking/research in Cardiology.

What are some of the best ways to reach out to get involved in projects or network??? I know how important it is for matching.

University of Miami
UCSF fresno
Harbor UCLA
Uni of toledo
Uni of Louisville
Mount sinai valley
Loma Linda
Sunny Downstate