Most cardiology teaching available to Indian physicians is either a three-year superspecialty degree they cannot take time out for, or a conference lecture that ends before the useful part. This page sets out what a practising doctor actually needs to learn, in what order, and what our courses cover.
Who these courses are for
Cardiology teaching in India is structured for people becoming cardiologists. But the majority of cardiac patients in this country are seen first — and often only — by someone who is not one: the MBBS physician in a district hospital, the MD General Medicine registrar covering casualty at night, the intensivist managing a shocked patient at 3 a.m., the family physician deciding whether this chest pain needs an ambulance.
These courses are built for that audience:
- MBBS physicians in general practice, emergency and rural settings
- MD General Medicine residents and consultants
- DNB and DM trainees preparing for exit examinations
- Intensivists and anaesthetists managing cardiac patients in the ICU
- Emergency physicians making triage decisions with limited information
The course pathway
1. Basic clinical cardiology
The foundation course. History and examination that still discriminates, ECG interpretation beyond pattern recognition, chest X-ray in cardiac disease, and the diagnostic reasoning that connects a presentation to a differential.
Substantial time goes to the ECG, because it remains the highest-yield investigation available to a physician with no cath lab. Not just STEMI recognition, but the patterns that are missed routinely: de Winter T-waves, Wellens syndrome, posterior infarction, Brugada, hyperkalaemia, and the paced or bundle-branch-blocked ECG in which infarction is hiding.
2. Echocardiography
From probe handling and standard views through to chamber quantification, valve assessment, diastolic function and right ventricular evaluation.
The module is organised around the questions a physician actually needs answered at the bedside — is this patient’s shock cardiogenic, is there a pericardial effusion causing tamponade, is the right ventricle failing, is this murmur significant — rather than around a formal reporting protocol. Focused bedside echocardiography for the non-cardiologist is treated as a distinct competency from a full diagnostic study, because it is.
3. Heart failure care
Diagnosis and phenotyping, guideline-directed medical therapy and the sequence in which to introduce it, the practical business of up-titration in a patient with borderline blood pressure and creeping creatinine, device selection, and the management of acute decompensation.
Particular attention to the two things that go wrong most often in Indian practice: under-titration of prognostic drugs because of tolerable side effects, and diuretic strategy in the congested patient who is not responding.
4. Complex coronary intervention
For interventional trainees and practising operators. Left main and bifurcation strategy, chronic total occlusion technique, calcified vessel preparation, intravascular imaging interpretation, and haemodynamic support selection.
Taught case-by-case from real angiographic material, including cases that went badly. Complications are covered explicitly — no-reflow, dissection, perforation, stent loss — because a course that shows only successful cases teaches you nothing about the moment you will actually need help.
5. Multi-organ failure and the cardiac patient
The patient whose heart failure is complicated by renal impairment, hepatic congestion, respiratory failure or sepsis. Contrast nephropathy risk and mitigation, anticoagulation with a bleeding patient, drug dosing in organ failure, and the decisions about escalation and ceiling of care that nobody teaches formally.
How the teaching is structured
Case-based, not lecture-based. Each session begins with a patient and works forward through the reasoning. The didactic content is delivered where it becomes necessary rather than up front.
Taught by a practising interventional cardiologist. Course material is written and delivered by Dr A M Thirugnanam, MD, FSCAI — a senior interventional cardiologist in active practice, not a full-time educator working from textbooks.
Online and asynchronous, with live sessions. Recorded modules you can work through at your own pace, plus live case discussion where you can present your own difficult patients.
Slides and reference material included. You keep the teaching material.
What a cardiology course should give you
A course is worth your money if, three months later, you are managing patients differently. Concretely, that means you should finish able to:
- Read an ECG in a way that changes your immediate management, including the patterns that are commonly missed
- Put a probe on a hypotensive patient and answer the four questions that determine what you do next
- Start and up-titrate heart failure therapy without stopping at the first small rise in creatinine
- Recognise which chest pain needs a cath lab in ninety minutes and which needs an outpatient stress test
- Know the limits of your own setting — and refer earlier, with better information, when the patient needs more than you have
That last one is not a modest goal. A physician who refers appropriately and early, having already started the right treatment, changes outcomes more than one who attempts management beyond their resources.
Certification and CME
On completion you receive a certificate of completion issued by the Academy of Elite Doctors.
To be precise about what that is: the Academy is Dr Thirugnanam’s own teaching body. The certificate records that you completed the programme. It is not accredited by a state medical council and does not carry CME credit hours. We state this plainly rather than leaving it ambiguous, because a certificate implying credit it does not carry is worth less to you than an honest one — and because you can verify the claim in a minute.
If you need formal CME credit for registration renewal, obtain it through your state medical council’s accredited programmes. What this course offers instead is the teaching itself.
Enrolment and fees
The mentorship programme runs over two years, at a fee of ₹2,50,000.
Shorter individual modules are available separately. For current intake dates, module pricing and enrolment, contact the Academy of Elite Doctors.
Frequently asked questions
Who teaches these cardiology courses?
Dr A M Thirugnanam, MD, FSCAI, MSICP — a senior interventional cardiologist practising in Hyderabad with 25 years in the cath lab and more than 45,000 procedures. Founder of the Academy of Elite Doctors, with 18 case presentations and studies at international meetings including TCT Miami and CRT Washington DC.
Do I need to be a cardiologist to enrol?
No. The basic cardiology, echocardiography, heart failure and multi-organ failure courses are designed for MBBS physicians, MD General Medicine doctors, intensivists and emergency physicians. Only the complex intervention course assumes interventional experience.
Are the courses online or in person?
Online — recorded modules you work through at your own pace, plus live case-discussion sessions where you can present your own patients. This is deliberate: it lets physicians outside the metros take part.
Will this help me prepare for DNB or DM examinations?
The basic cardiology and echocardiography modules cover a substantial part of the cardiology content in general medicine exit examinations, and the case-based format suits viva preparation. They are not a substitute for a formal exam-preparation course.
Is there a certificate?
Yes — a certificate of completion from the Academy of Elite Doctors. It is not a CME-accredited certificate and carries no credit hours from a state medical council.
Courses designed and delivered by Dr A M Thirugnanam, senior interventional cardiologist, through the Academy of Elite Doctors. Reference texts available at cardiologybooks.com. Last reviewed: September 2026.