I just received an interesting question about heart surgeons…

The question was, “How many heart surgeons are there?”

Honestly, that is the first time I ever received this question. Typically, the question I get over-and-over-and-over again is, “Who are the top heart surgeons?” and “Who are the best heart valve surgeons?”

That said, I was excited to learn more about cardiothoracic surgeons. So, I did what just about anybody would do… I started Google’ing ^[1] and surfing the world wide web.

First, I found myself at the homepage for The Cardiothoracic Surgery Network ^[2]. There, I found some information that related to this question. According to The Cardiothoracic Surgery Network, there are approximately 32,000 members of that association. However, a portion of those members are not surgeons they are allied health professionals.

Then, I went to the The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. ^[3] There I learned that the STS has about 5,400 members. Once again, however, a number of those members were not heart surgeons… They were allied health professionals and researchers.

I then became desperate and ended up at Wikipedia… Unfortunately, there was no distinct reference to the question of “How many heart surgeons are there?”

I could offer up a guess but I’d rather not. That said, if you have any ideas on this topic, please help me out, and leave a reply (below) with some data, info, anything.

Keep on tickin,