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Background A large volume of literature has documented racial disparities in the delivery of cardiovascular care in the United States and that decreased access to procedures and undertreatment lead to worse outcomes. A lack of diversity among physicians is considered to be a major contributor. The fellowship training program in cardiovascular medicine at The Ohio State University Medical Center had never trained a fellow from a minority group underrepresented in medicine (URM) before 2007. Intervention In 2005, the fellowship made it a priority to recruit and match URM candidates in an effort to address the community's lack of diversity and disparities in cardiovascular care. Methods Program leaders revised the recruitment process, making diversity a high priority. Faculty met with members of diverse residency programs during visits to other institutions, the focus of interview day was changed to highlight mentorship, additional targeted postinterview communications reached out to highly competitive applicants, and a regular mentoring program was constructed to allow meaningful interaction with URM faculty and fellows. Results Since these changes were implemented, the program has successfully matched a URM fellow for 5 consecutive years. Such candidates currently make up 4 of 16 total trainees (25%) in the fellowship in cardiovascular medicine. Conclusions The cardiovascular medicine fellowship training program at The Ohio State University was able to revise recruitment to attract competitive URM applicants as part of a concerted effort. Other educational programs facing similar challenges may be able to learn from the university's experiences.

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SUMMARY This study was designed to validate the use of combined invasive and noninvasive methods in assessing serial pressure-volume relations in man. Ten patients undergoing cardiac catheterization were studied with simultaneous intracardiac micromanometer pressure recordings, gated radionuclide angiography and echocardiography. Systolic and diastolic function were measured at rest, during right atrial pacing rates of 100 and 120 beats/min and after nitroglycerin administration. Right atrial pacing studies (rate of 100 beats/min) were performed in duplicate to determine the reproducibility of the method. At the conclusion of each study, the model was validated with contrast angiography.Good reproducibility was evident when measuring the maximum and average filling and ejection rates, time to peak filling rate, ejection fraction, the modulus of chamber stiffness, the time course of left ventricular relaxation, global average stress and ventricular work indexes using the model described above. These data were not significantly different (p > 0.05) from comparable data obtained from contrast angiography. Right atrial pacing and nitroglycerin administration resulted in predictable alterations in the pressure-volume loop and in the systolic and diastolic measurements. The maximum and average filling rates, ejection rates and time to peak filling rate appeared to be heart rate-dependent variables.By Radionuclide angiography uses a nongeometric,