Cardiothoracic Surgery Exam Dates 2026: Testing Windows, Deadlines & Scheduling

What This Calendar Actually Covers

This article is about the schedule for Primary Certification in Cardiothoracic Surgery, issued by the American Osteopathic Board of Surgery (AOBS) with AOA certification approval. It covers both stages of the pathway: a written examination and an oral examination. If you are searching for dates, the first thing to understand is that this certification does not run on a single published "exam day" the way many credentials do. Instead, you move through an application, a written stage, and an oral stage, each with its own scheduling mechanics.

If you are new to the credential itself, start with What Is Cardiothoracic Surgery Certification? and the broader Cardiothoracic Surgery Certification overview. This page focuses narrowly on timing: which windows exist, where the published information conflicts, and how to build a realistic calendar around it.

The 2026 Oral Sitting at a Glance

The one firmly documented 2026 date is the oral examination. The 2026 cardiothoracic oral sitting was held on September 30 in person in New Orleans, according to the AOBS oral-exam page. That detail matters for planning in two ways. First, the oral stage is delivered in person, which means travel, lodging, and time away from your practice or fellowship have to be built into your calendar. Second, because the sitting is a single in-person event rather than a rolling remote window, missing it can mean waiting for the next scheduled sitting.

The oral fee is $1,500. The oral stage uses criterion-referenced clinical cases that assess diagnosis, investigations, differential diagnosis, and management. The published information does not give an oral question count or a timer, so do not rely on figures you may see quoted elsewhere; no such numbers are established here.

Adding the two standard fees gives $3,000, but that figure excludes other costs and should not be assumed for candidates who receive written-exam credit. For a fuller breakdown, see Cardiothoracic Surgery Certification Cost 2026.

Written Stage: Format, Fee, and Remote Delivery

What you sit for

The written exam consists of 200 multiple-choice questions administered over four hours and 30 minutes. The fee is $1,500, and the scaled passing score is 500 on a 200-800 scale. Those numbers are the anchor facts for your planning: at 200 questions in 270 minutes, you have a bit over a minute per item, so stamina and pacing deserve as much attention as content mastery. For more on the score itself, see Cardiothoracic Surgery Passing Score 2026.

Remote proctoring requirements

Remote delivery follows the AOA remote-proctored exam instructions, which name the MonitorEDU Secure Browser and PARADIGM testing. Scheduling implications include:

• Complete any required system checks well before exam day rather than the night before.
• Plan a quiet, compliant testing environment for a block of more than four and a half hours.
• Read the current AOA remote-proctoring instructions directly, since technical requirements can change between sittings.

The Spring Window and the Lead-Time Conflict

This is where candidates most often get tripped up. The AOBS specialty pages and the board homepage do not fully agree:

• The specialty pages conflict on application lead time: some wording says five months, other wording says six months.
• The specialty pages retain April scheduling language.
• The board homepage lists May 1-3, 2027 for the remote Spring Qualifying Examination.

Because these do not reconcile cleanly, the safest planning assumption is the more conservative one: if you are targeting a spring window, treat six months of lead time as your working minimum and confirm in the application portal. Count backward from the exam month, not forward from when you "feel ready."

Individual deadlines are resolved by current AOBS notices and the application portal, not by third-party summaries, including this one.

The April 2026 ABTS Written-Exam Recognition

An April 29, 2026 AOA announcement, which centered on a new neurocritical care subspecialty certification, also noted that AOBS expanded certification eligibility. Specifically, AOBS recognizes a passed American Board of Thoracic Surgery (ABTS) written examination for AOBS cardiothoracic oral-stage application.

The scheduling consequence is significant: a candidate who has already passed the ABTS written exam may be able to apply for the AOBS cardiothoracic oral stage without sitting the AOBS written exam. Keep the boundaries clear, though:

• This is credit within the selected AOBS pathway. It is not a substitution of an ABTS credential, syllabus, or pass rate.
• Fee implications may differ. The $3,000 combined total is a simple addition of the standard written and oral fees and should not be assumed for candidates receiving written-exam credit.
• Confirm documentation requirements and timing directly with AOBS before relying on this route.

If you are weighing whether the credential is worth pursuing at all, see Is the Cardiothoracic Surgery Certification Worth It? for the broader return-on-investment picture.

Eligibility Paperwork Is the Real Deadline

For most candidates, the binding constraint is not the exam date but the readiness of the application file. Eligibility requires approved training, active unrestricted licensure, and required documentation. The specialty page retains the traditional route of four years of AOA-approved general surgery plus two years of cardiothoracic training, with program-director documentation. Current AOBS Board Policies also recognize qualifying DO/MD and ACGME routes.

A full walk-through of the qualification rules is in Cardiothoracic Surgery Requirements 2026. For the training side of the story, see Cardiothoracic Surgery Training.

Retake Windows After a Failed Attempt

Your calendar also needs a contingency lane. The AOBS written-exam page sets out these rules:

• After a failure, you must reapply; there is no automatic rebooking.
• A two-year retake window applies after the first or second failure.
• After a third written or oral failure, documented board-review study is required before another written attempt.

The practical takeaway: a failed attempt costs more than one fee. It costs a fresh application cycle with its own lead time. That is a strong argument for treating your first attempt as the one that counts and building preparation time accordingly. For perspective on difficulty and outcomes, see How Hard Is the Cardiothoracic Surgery Exam? and Cardiothoracic Surgery Pass Rate 2026. Note that no AOBS cardiothoracic-specific pass rate has been verified, so be skeptical of any precise figure you encounter.

Scheduling Your Prep Around the Content Outline

The only study-planning section in this article is tied directly to the published content outline. The written exam's ten official content areas carry these ranges:

Because roughly three-quarters of the written exam sits in just two areas, your calendar should front-load them. A sensible allocation across the months before your exam date:

Do not neglect the oral stage in your calendar: it tests clinical reasoning through cases rather than recall, so leave room for verbalizing diagnosis, investigations, differential, and management out loud. For domain-level detail, read Cardiothoracic Surgery Exam Domains 2026, and for a structured approach see the Cardiothoracic Surgery Study Guide 2026. When you are ready to test yourself against realistic items, try the cardiothoracic practice tests.

After You Pass: The Maintenance Calendar

Certification dates do not end at the oral exam. The specialty timeline describes primary active status for one year, subject to OCC (Osteopathic Continuous Certification) participation. Ongoing obligations include:

• Licensure: maintain active licensure.
• CME: 60 credits per three-year cycle. The current "CME Requirements by Specialty Board, 2025-2027" page confirms 60 credits for time-limited/OCC participants and supersedes the older CME-guide link.
• Longitudinal assessment: annual, 15 questions.
• QI/QA attestation: required every three years.

One caution: the OCC component page carries legacy wording about a 10-year cycle. That wording does not establish a new ten-year validity term, so do not assume your certification runs ten years without ongoing requirements. If long-term career planning is on your mind, see Cardiothoracic Surgery Jobs and the Cardiothoracic Surgery Salary Guide 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions