The Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center recently received a generous gift to develop a national training center for surgical and interventional treatments for cardiovascular disease, the number one killer of Americans. The benefactor wishes to remain anonymous.
"This gift gives us the resources to build an institute that will serve as a very unique training ground for practicing medical professionals who are dedicated to the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Alan Lumsden, medical director of the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center in Houston. "In addition to providing didactic training, we have partnered with the Methodist Institute for Technology, Innovation, and Education (MITIEsm) to use simulated high-risk patient care environments so teams can train in a virtual world before treating patients."
The new institute, in partnership with MITIE, will include a procedural skills lab, advanced robotic surgical and endovascular training suites, and a virtual hospital for hands-on training with industry's most advanced technology so that doctors can safely learn to use the tools that are driving medicine to higher standards.
The new institute, called the DeBakey Institute for Cardiovascular Education and Training will incorporate didactic work and interactive skills for medical teams from around the world. Experts will provide classroom-style cardiovascular disease-focused course work. Teams will then be able to work in MITIE in a suite of virtual operating rooms and catheterization labs which are designed to provide procedural rehearsal before working on real patients.
The Education Institute will expand upon the cardiovascular arm of MITIE, a 35,000 square foot education and research institute at Methodist. MITIE houses a completely unique, highly advanced, hands-on, simulation-based training center, which over the last three years has helped over 3,000 physicians and their teams, across 15 different specialties, quickly adapt to new technologies that are central to the practice of medicine.
The didactic arm of the Institute will host traditional symposia, conferences and continuing medical education (CME) programs in cardiology and cardiovascular surgery. Classes will include the Total Endovascular series that is currently in its third installment; the Cardiovascular Fellows Boot Camp; an EMS boot camp for emergency medical service providers; cardiac imaging symposia; thoracic transplantation; Pumps & Pipes, an annual symposium with oil and gas engineers, and more.
The facility will offer simulated training in aortic repair, carotid endarterectomy, femoral popliteal bypass, off pump/beating heart coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), DaVinci robot-assisted surgical procedures, Hansen Sensei robot-assisted endovascular interventions and more. For a complete listing of upcoming courses and events, see here.