J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2009;137:1325-1326
© 2009 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery
Discussion
| The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Dr Irving Kron
(Charlottesville, Va). Dr Prasad, I enjoyed this presentation. I agree entirely that thoracic surgery education is in a crisis. This has been noted very well by you in citing the decrease in applications. Another major concern is the decrease in ABTS pass rates. You did a good job of putting this all together. Unfortunately, that is all I agree with in this article. My differences of opinion relate to several issues. The catchy title speaks to challenges of emerging technologies, yet you don't really get into that at all, in either your methodology or your article. So can you comment on that?
Dr Prasad. The question of emerging technologies probably has to start with Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel, who has probably caused a lot of these problems. In 1965 he wrote an article that looked at a retrospective review of transistors, and he made Moore's Law at that point, which said that the amount of transistors per square inch on a circuit board will increase, will double every 2 years, and that was in 1965. In the last 40 years, that has held up. And what does that mean for us as cardiac surgeons? It means that now it gives the potential for cardiologists to put stents in, to develop stents, and to not involve us in the care of our patients. It allows radiologists to use 64-slice computed tomography scans and aortic stents and not involve us in the care of these patients. It allows interventional pulmonologists to carry portable ultrasounds and drain pleural effusions and not involve us in the care of these patients. And last, it allows medical oncologists to use radiation therapy and not involve us in the care of these patients, and soon they will be treating T1 lesions . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Copyright © 2009 by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery.
