The Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) has developed a new guideline for teaching cardiology and radiology trainees about the imaging modality it takes its name from: cardiovascular computed tomography (CCT).
The full document is being published in the Journal of the Cardiovascular Computed Tomography, Radiology: Cardiothoracic Imaging and JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging. It was designed to help program directors responsible for training independent practitioners or advanced practitioners.
This document, the SCCT emphasized, was not designed to replace existing recommendations shared by the American College of Radiology and American College of Cardiology.
The full curriculum focuses on what the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education views as the six core competencies of all trainee education and assessment: medical knowledge; practice-based learning and improvement; patient care and procedural skills; systems-based practice; interpersonal and communication skills; and professionalism.
“The rapid growth and established benefit of a CCT approach in multiple clinical domains require programs to adopt a comprehensive training curriculum to meet the growing need for well-trained independent and advanced practitioners in both cardiology and radiology,” lead author Andrew Choi, MD, a cardiologist with the George Washington University School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement. “This guideline allows cardiovascular medicine to expand high quality CCT in the United States and around the world.”
“I anticipate the need for training of new cardiac CT experts to continue and increase substantially in the coming decade as the tremendous proven value that this modality provides to our patients is more and more recognized.,” added Suhny Abbara, MD, chief of cardiothoracic imaging and director of the cardiothoracic imaging fellowship program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and a former SCCT president. “It therefore is more important than ever before to define and standardize the training requirements for users, basic and advanced practitioners of cardiac CT, independent of whether they are radiologists or cardiologists. This is exactly what this guideline addresses.”
Read the full SCCT guideline here.
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.