Valerie W. Rusch, MD, FACS

My colleagues at Memorial Sloan Kettering and I use the highest level of technological expertise to treat our patients. But I also believe in a hands-on, person-to-person approach to ensure that my patients receive the best possible care. To minimize patients’ discomfort and the length of their hospital stay, we use minimally invasive techniques such as VATS (video-assisted thoracic surgery) and the latest high-tech procedures including robotically assisted surgery whenever possible. To determine the stage of lung and other thoracic cancers, we often use EBUS (endobronchial ultrasound) and EUS (esophageal ultrasound). These techniques allow us to determine the extent of tumors without an incision.

Today’s optimal care of people with cancer 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 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. With my colleagues, 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 people 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 de 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 at 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 MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston 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 MSK.

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 Committee on Cancer, and as Chair of the Mesothelioma Subcommittee of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer’s 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.