At the end of the clerkship, students will have acquired a knowledge base, appropriate for their level of training, consisting of:

Fundamentals of hemodynamics

• Determinants of cardiac output
• Determinants of oxygen delivery
• Normal cardiac chamber pressures and saturations

Basic principles of cardiopulmonary bypass

Cardiopulmonary physiology of common congenital heart defects

• Atrial septal defect
• Ventricular septal defect
• Coarctation of the aorta
• Tetralogy of Fallot
• The single ventricle physiology including
  • Duct dependent pulmonary circulation and
  • Duct dependent systemic circulation
• Transposition of great arteries

Repair strategies for common congenital heart defects

Principle of postoperative cardiac care

• Pharmacological support of the recovering myocardium
• Interpretation of invasive and noninvasive cardiac monitoring (i.e., right and left atrial pressures, mixed venous saturations, ECG, oxygen saturations, urine output, arterial wave forms, arterial blood gas interpretation, and lactate measurements)
• Fundamentals of postoperative hemostasis
• Fundamentals of cardiac pacing
• Fundamentals of mechanical ventilation
• Fundamentals of extracorporeal support

In addition, each student is expected to give a presentation on a CVTS topic of their choice. This will occur during the last week of the rotation.