The Cardiovascular Disease Residency Training Program at the University of Southern California under the direction of Enrique Ostrzega, M.D. spans three years, with an available fourth year of specialized fellowship in interventional cardiology or electrophysiology. Currently, four fellows are accredited each year in the Cardiovascular Disease Residency, two in the Interventional residency, and one in the Electrophysiology residency. The cardiovascular residency training takes place at the USC Health Sciences Campus that includes three major teaching hospitals. The programs philosophy is that education and research are achievable only by first achieving excellence in patient care.
Trainees practice in the largest acute care hospital in the United States.
Each year, approximately 55,000 patients are admitted to the Medical Center and over 764,000 patient visits are made to the Outpatient Clinics and the Emergency Service, supported by more than 25 million laboratory tests and 4 million radiological procedures. Trainees are provided an excellent education in cardiology due to the exceedingly broad array of cardiac illnesses seen at the Medical Center. Nearly 40 percent of the patients admitted to Cardiology have myopathic, valvular, or congenital heart disease, or are pregnant women with cardiac disease. The cultural diversity in the patient population provides an outstanding education opportunity for different aspects of atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease. The cardiovascular disease residency training program provides a consultative service at Norris.