Cardiac Surgeon

What heart surgeons make

There is no separate federal wage line for cardiac surgeons. They are counted inside Surgeons, All Other, where the published 2025 median is $414,010 a year and the bottom tenth sit near $78,000. Treat the middle figure as an estimate for this job, not a measurement of it. A widely cited 2024 physician pay survey by Doximity put average pay for thoracic surgeons near $720,000, which is where the top of this range comes from. Government surveys count employed doctors only, so surgeons who are partners in their own group are missing from the data.

While you are training

You are paid for every year after medical school, which is the good news. The bad news is that it is 6 to 8 of those years, on 60 to 80 hour weeks, while your loans sit there.

Top of the field

Pay tracks operating volume. Transplant and mechanical heart support programs, and partnership in a private group, sit at the top. Academic surgeons at university hospitals generally earn less and teach and research instead.

What it costs to get there

Bachelor's degree (4 years, in-state public)

Roughly $10,000 to $12,000 a year in tuition and fees

Medical school (4 years)

Roughly $30,000 to $45,000 a year in-state public, more at private schools

MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) and applications

$1,000 to $3,000 in testing and application fees

Licensing exams

Several hundred dollars for each of the three steps, plus board certification fees later

Roughly, all in

$150,000 to $315,000

Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel

The low end is two years at a community college, two years at an in state public university, and an in state public medical school, with residency and the cardiac surgery fellowship paid as jobs rather than charged as tuition. The high end is four full years of undergraduate tuition and a private medical school, plus admission testing, application and board certification fees. The Association of American Medical Colleges reports median education debt for medical school graduates at around $200,000. Neither figure counts the fourteen to sixteen years of earnings you give up, and that association runs a fee assistance program that waives or cuts application and admission test fees for people who qualify, so check it before you pay anything.

The Association of American Medical Colleges reports median education debt for medical school graduates at around $200,000. It also runs a fee assistance program that waives or cuts application and testing fees for students who qualify, so check that before you pay anything.

How heart surgeons get paid

• Hospital employment

  A base salary plus a bonus tied to how much you operate. The most common arrangement now.

• Private group partnership

  You buy into a practice and share its profits. Highest ceiling, and the government wage survey does not capture it.

• Academic medicine

  A university salary, lower than private practice, with protected time for research and teaching residents.

• Call pay

  Extra money for being available overnight and on weekends for emergencies.

The path

Fourteen to sixteen years after high school. There is no shortcut and no part-time version.

1. 1

   Bachelor's degree

   4 years

   Any major, but you must finish the pre-medicine science courses and keep a very high grade average. Write the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test).

2. 2

   Medical school

   4 years

   An MD (doctor of medicine) or DO (doctor of osteopathic medicine) degree. Two years of science, then two years of clinical rotations in hospitals.

3. 3

   Surgical training

   6 to 8 years

   Two routes. The integrated route is a 6-year cardiothoracic residency straight out of medical school. The traditional route is a 5-year general surgery residency followed by a 2 to 3 year cardiothoracic fellowship.

4. 4

   Board certification

   After training

   Pass the written and oral examinations of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. Congenital heart surgery is a further certificate on top.

5. 5

   State medical license

   During and after training

   Granted by the medical board of the state you practice in, after you have passed all three steps of the national licensing examination.

High school courses that help

• Biology and chemistry

  Required for every pre-medicine track in the country.

• Physics

  Tested on the medical school admission exam, and blood flow is fluid dynamics.

• Calculus and statistics

  Most medical schools want at least one college math course, and research needs statistics.

• English

  Half the admission exam is reading and reasoning, and you will be explaining frightening things to families.

Time and money, at a glance

Years after high school

14 to 16

Getting into medical school

Fewer than half of applicants are admitted anywhere

Total tuition

Commonly $160,000 to $250,000 across both degrees

Paid while training?

Yes, from the first day of residency

Who licenses this job

Every state licenses physicians through its own medical board, and there is no single national license. What is national is the examination: you pass the three steps of the United States Medical Licensing Examination, or its osteopathic equivalent, and your state board issues the license. Residency and fellowship programs must be accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Board certification from the American Board of Thoracic Surgery is technically separate from licensure, but no hospital will let you operate on hearts without it.

It is competitive at every single gate

Getting into medical school is hard. Matching into general surgery is harder. Matching into an integrated cardiothoracic program is one of the most competitive things in American medicine, with only a few dozen positions offered nationally each year. Then there are fellowship places, then board examinations. Plenty of excellent people are stopped at one of these gates and end up in a different specialty. Go in knowing that, and pick a route you would still be glad to be on if the heart doors close.

Where heart surgeons specialize

• Adult cardiac surgery

  Bypass grafts and valve replacement. The bulk of the work.

• Congenital heart surgery

  Operating on babies and children. A further certificate after cardiothoracic training.

• Transplant and mechanical support

  Heart transplants and implanted pumps. Small, intense, hospital-based programs.

• Aortic surgery

  Repairing the body's largest artery, often as an emergency.

• Minimally invasive and robotic

  Smaller incisions, faster recovery, a growing share of cases.

Nice-to-haves before medical school

• Research experience

  Surgical programs care about it. Starting in your undergraduate years is normal.

• Shadowing a surgeon

  Spend a day in an operating room before you plan 15 years around it.

• Manual skill and stamina

  Sewing, instruments, knots. Some people practice on suture kits for years.

• A backup you would actually enjoy

  Most pre-medicine students do not become surgeons. Build a path you would be happy with.

A typical day

In the hospital by 6am to round on patients who were operated on yesterday, most of them in intensive care with tubes and drains. First case starts around 7:30: a bypass takes roughly 4 to 6 hours standing at the table, with the patient's heart stopped and a machine doing its work. A second case may follow. Afternoons that are not operating are clinic, reviewing scans and consenting patients for surgery. Then notes, phone calls, and overnight call every few nights.

The honest trade-offs

Work life

Typical hours

60 to 70 a week, plus overnight call

Remote work

None

Physical demand

High: hours standing, extreme concentration

Unionized

No, though resident physicians at some hospitals have unionized

Similar paths

• CardiologistA heart doctor who diagnoses and treats heart disease, often without ever opening the chest.
• General SurgeonThirteen years of training to become the person who opens someone up and fixes the problem.
• Thoracic SurgeonOperate inside the chest: lungs, esophagus, airway and chest wall. One of the longest trainings in medicine.

A machine does the heart's job during surgery

Cardiopulmonary bypass, the heart-lung machine, pumps and oxygenates blood so the heart can be stopped and opened. It is run by a clinical perfusionist, a separate career with its own training.

It is a tiny profession

The federal data counts about 25,100 people in the whole Surgeons, All Other category in 2024, with roughly 600 openings a year projected. Cardiac surgeons are a slice of that.

You can start heart training straight out of medical school

The integrated 6-year cardiothoracic residency is a recent invention. Before those programs appeared in the 2000s, everyone had to finish a full general surgery residency first.

The board is older than most hospitals you have been in

The American Board of Thoracic Surgery was founded in 1948 as an independent nonprofit, and it still sets the standard of education, training and technical skill required to call yourself a thoracic surgeon.