Valerie W. Rusch, MD, FACS

Today’s optimal care of cancer patients depends on the close involvement and coordination of physicians in multiple specialties. Tightly integrated, multidisciplinary care is the hallmark of our approach to the management of thoracic cancers. Our Thoracic Disease Management Team — which I co-lead with Dr. Mark Kris, Chief of Thoracic Medical Oncology — meets twice a week to discuss complex patient problems at our Thoracic Tumor Board and to develop and oversee multidisciplinary research at our Team research conference. Along with Dr. Kris, I am responsible for coordinating multiple research studies aimed at improving the care of our thoracic patients. We are proud of our active participation in national and international clinical trials, and are studying many new ways to help patients with the most difficult cancers, including better methods to diagnose cancers at an earlier stage and the testing of new cancer treatments. My own research efforts focus on the genetics and treatment of lung cancer, malignant pleural mesothelioma, and esophageal cancer.

A native New Yorker, I graduated from the Lycée Français of New York and Vassar College, and am fluent in both French and English. I received my MD degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, then completed residency training in General Surgery and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. After that, I spent one year at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, Texas, for additional training in thoracic oncology, before joining the faculty at the University of Washington for six years. In 1989, I joined the staff at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

In addition to other responsibilities, I currently serve as Chair of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, as a Regent (i.e., member of the Board of Directors) of the American College of Surgeons, as Chair of the Lung and Esophagus Task Force of the American Joint Commission on Cancer, and as Chair of the Mesothelioma Subcommittee of the IASLC (International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer) Staging Committee. I contribute regularly to peer-reviewed specialty surgical and oncology journals, and have written chapters on lung cancer, mesothelioma, esophageal cancer, pleural disease, and mediastinal disease for several medical textbooks.