Meet MSK Surgeon Jeffrey Drebin, Chair of the Department of Surgery, is an expert in pancreatic cancer and treating liver tumors. Learn more about surgery at MSK, which has among the country’s largest cancer surgery departments.
Show transcript
DR. JEFFREY DREBIN
I hope patients feel reassured after an appointment here at MSK. I hope they feel like they’re at an institution and they’ve met a surgeon who is gonna look out for them throughout their care.
My name is Jeff Drebin. I’m the Chair of the Department of Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and I specialize in pancreas cancer and treatment of liver tumors.
I try to give my patients an honest appraisal of what’s wrong, an excellent operation, and attentive postoperative care.
Most patients know that pancreas cancer is a very tough type of cancer. Fortunately, when it’s found earlier, we still have the opportunity to do surgery, often in conjunction with chemotherapy or potentially with radiation. And we do have patients who are long-term survivors.
Pancreas cancer is an area where we’ve made enormous strides, which are only beginning to shift the curves on patient survival. We’re doing surgery better and safer. In some cases, we’re doing surgery with minimally invasive techniques using laparoscopy, or the robot.
What sets MSK surgeons apart is our expertise. We’re the largest department of surgery doing cancer surgery in the United States. Every surgeon is very focused in a specific area. What I think I’m proud of is that we do really proper and correct cancer surgery. Sometimes it’s: “You know what? We can watch that. You don’t need that big operation right now.”
Every member of the Department of Surgery is working not just to do the best surgery we can do today but to be able to bring to bear for our patients treatment that will become the standard in the future.
