Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Program

Program Identity & Fit

Mount Sinai's I6 Integrated Thoracic Surgery Residency is a small, ultra-selective six-year track (two positions per year) built around two high-volume subspecialty engines: an academically dominant cardiovascular surgery department performing over 2,000 cases annually with recognized leadership in mitral valve repair, transcatheter therapies, and aortic reconstruction, and a thoracic oncology-focused general thoracic division emphasizing complex and "unresectable" cancer cases (lung, esophageal, mesothelioma, thymoma) integrated with multidisciplinary oncology and interventional radiology services. The program is explicitly designed to produce surgeons capable of both academic and clinical careers, with an optional 12-24 month dedicated research block between PGY4 and PGY5 as well as ongoing clinical research opportunities with faculty throughout training. Training occurs at a single flagship tertiary/quaternary academic campus on Manhattan's Upper East Side, under chairs who are field-defining figures in their respective disciplines, signaling a program that prizes procedural sophistication, case complexity, and long-term subspecialty leadership potential over broad general-surgery generalism. Given its size and structure, the program appears to select for candidates already committed to cardiothoracic surgery as a six-year unified pathway rather than those deciding after a categorical general surgery residency.