As Chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Hepatopancreatobiliary Service, I oversee a team of seven board-certified surgeons that performs approximately 1,000 operations a year for HPB-related disease; of that number, roughly 350 are pancreas and related resections, 350-400 are liver resections, and the remainder are mix of palliative, non-therapeutic, diagnostic procedures.
We work intimately with the broader healthcare group — meeting weekly to discuss each patient’s care. In these and other ways, we design the very best treatment plan possible, customized to each individual’s needs.
In addition to my time in the clinic and operating room, I have a keen interest in research, and have been actively involved in several clinical trials since joining the faculty at MSK in 1997.
My colleagues and I are actively investigating novel therapies for patients with bile duct cancer and primary liver cancer that cannot be treated surgically. Alongside colleagues from medical oncology and radiology, we are studying how these tumors respond to treatment. We are also learning more about the most basic, molecular genetic changes that take place in bile duct cancers to understand how these tumors develop in the first place.