Laparoscopic Appendectomy near Sleepy Hollow, NY

Biography: Dr. Emond is the Vice Chairman of Surgery at Columbia University. He has over 30 years of experience performing liver transplantation and complex liver and biliary surgery in children and adults, including the first living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) in the United States. Dr. Emond has published extensively in this field and was the co-chair of the NIH A2ALL program for 13 years. In collaboration with the department of Medicine at Columbia, Dr. Emond recruited the leadership of the Columbia Center for Translational immunology that created the foundation for translational and clinical research in transplantation tolerance. This will lead the way to inducing transplant tolerance in liver patients with the mixed chimerism strategy. As Director of Transplantation at the Columbia University Medical Center Dr. Emond's activities foster clinical excellence and research across all 11 of the solid organ transplant programs at the Medical Center. In recognition of his national and international leadership in transplantation, Dr. Emond is the past president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the pre-eminent association of a transplant surgery. Contribution to Science Living donor liver transplantation Dr. Emond has spent a substantial portion of his career developing living donor liver transplantation and studying the safety of the procedure in both the donor and recipient. He participated in the first living donor liver transplant in the United States and focused on refining the techniques of performing living donor liver transplants and split liver transplants. He was the national co-chair of the NIH-sponsored Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation (A2ALL) consortium from 2002 to 2015 to study the safety and outcomes of living donor liver transplants. Hepatic resection/ischemia Dr. Emond developed techniques for surgical resection of liver tumors and studied the effect of ischemia during resection on postoperative liver function. These studies include the outcomes of the extent of hepatectomy, the biochemical response to major hepatectomy and ischemia-reperfusion injury of the liver in rodent models. He has studied the clinical safety of inducing total vascular exclusion to provide a bloodless field during the liver transection. This has applications in both liver cancer and living donor hepatectomies. Hepatocellular carcinoma treatment Dr. Emond has studied many aspects of managing patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. These studies have included characterizing the risk factors for recurrence of disease following transplantation due to comorbidities and tumor characteristics. The research team has also studied the optimal method of preventing tumor growth in patients with HCC on the liver transplant wait list in addition to optimal strategies of liver allocation to optimize outcomes following liver transplantation. These studies have contributed to proposed changes in UNOS exception point allocation for liver transplant candidates with HCC. Pediatric liver transplantation Dr. Emond helped develop the field of pediatric liver transplantation. Contributions to this field include: the use of living donors for pediatric patients; use of auxiliary liver transplants for metabolic diseases; use of partial liver grafts for pediatric patients; and technical modifications that improved outcomes for this patient population. Visit The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at columbiasurgery.org/liver

Biography: Dr. S. Sunghyun Yoon is the Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology and Vice-Chair of Surgical Oncology Research and Education in the Department of Surgery at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). Dr. Yoon is a national and international expert in the treatment of patients with sarcomas and other soft tissue tumors, gastric (stomach) and gastroesophageal cancers, gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs), and melanoma. He also has over 18 years of experience in the treatment of other gastrointestinal and abdominal tumors, hepatobiliary tumors, neuroendocrine/adrenal tumors, lymphomas, and spleen tumors. He has been the principal investigator of several clinical trials examining novel treatment strategies and given numerous invited national and international lectures in relation to these cancers. Several of these trials have investigated the treatment of sarcomas, especially abdominal/retroperitoneal sarcomas, with advanced radiation techniques such as proton beam radiation and aggressive surgical resection to minimize local recurrence. Read More About These Treatments: https://columbiasurgery.org/conditions-and-treatments/retroperitoneal-sarcomas-and-pelvic-sarcomas Dr. Yoon was an early advocate for minimally invasive robotic surgery and has performed over 300 robotic procedures including robotic gastrectomies (stomach removal). He has one of the world's largest experiences in performing prophylactic total gastrectomies for patients with hereditary diffuse gastric cancer (HDGC syndrome) secondary to germline CDH1 mutation. He pioneered a technique for connection of the small bowel to the esophagus after total gastrectomy that is used by former surgical trainees and colleagues throughout the country due to its extremely low leakage rate. Dr. Yoon graduated from Harvard University and received his M.D. from the University of California at San Diego. He completed his residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and his fellowship in surgical oncology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He was an Associate Professor of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School before joining the staff at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2012. Dr. Yoon was an Attending Surgeon in the Division of Gastric and Mixed Tumors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a Professor of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College before joining CUIMC in 2021. Dr. Yoon's main research interests are in cancer stem cells and targeted biological agents in combination with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. His laboratory has been funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute for 18 years and strives to translate new research discoveries into the clinic. Dr. Yoon is also part of multi-institution research groups funded by Stand Up To Cancer and the DeGregorio Family Foundation to discover early diagnostics and new therapies for gastric cancer. His clinical and research efforts have led to over 150 original research articles, book chapters, and reviews. For a complete list of publications, please visit NCBI.

Biography: Dr. Bret Taback is a nationally recognized surgical oncologist in the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center department of surgery. Dr. Taback is a leader in the clinical management of melanoma, sarcoma and skin/soft tissue tumor surgery. Dr. Taback is the Director of the Melanoma and Sarcoma Program and Director of the Breast Surgery Fellowship. Dr. Taback received his MD degree at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston , and completed his general surgery residency at Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital. During that time he completed a Basic Science Research Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston. Following this, he completed a fellowship in Complex Surgical Oncology at the John Wayne Cancer Institute, Santa Monica, California. Dr. Taback is a member of a number of organizations and societies including Society of Surgical Oncology, American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Association for Cancer Research. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He has published and authored numerous peer review manuscripts, abstracts and presentations, as well as book chapters over the years in notable publications such as Annals of Surgery, Annals of Surgical Oncology, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. He is a clinical investigator with SWOG and Alliance for clinical trials. Dr. Taback has served on numerous hospital committees including tumor boards, Institutional Review Boards, Oncology Operations Council and is the American College of Surgeon's Commission on Cancer Physician Liaison for NYP Hospital. Most recently, Dr. Taback is a noted Castle Connolly Top Doctor.