J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2008;136:398-399
© 2008 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery
The National Institutes of Health funding for cardiothoracic surgical research
Irving L. Kron, MD*
Department of Surgery, Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Virginia Medical Center, Charlottesville, Va
Received for publication May 9, 2008; accepted for publication June 2, 2008.
* Address for reprints: Irving L. Kron, MD, Professor and Chairman, University of Virginia Health System, Department of Surgery, Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Virginia Medical Center, Lee Street, Room 2753, Box 800679, Charlottesville, VA 22908. (Email: ilk@virginia.edu).
| The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below. |
| See related article on page 392.
|
Ratcliffe and colleagues have made an important contribution about the state of research for cardiothoracic surgeons (see page 392). They have appropriately concluded that per capita funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for cardiothoracic surgeons is less than that of the NIH as a whole. They have done a very careful analysis of the reasons for this. The bottom line is that there are two major issues.
The first is that there had been a change related to grant review in that surgical grants were reallocated to nonsurgical study sections. The concept here was to have more disease-oriented study sections. In practice, this meant that clinical investigators would not get appropriate peer review. Cardiothoracic surgical research is truly translational research. It takes . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Copyright © 2008 by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery.
