Robert Cerfolio

Bio

The Mesothelioma Clinic at the University of Alabama's Kirklin Clinic was formed to bring multidisciplinary care to mesothelioma patients in the Birmingham, Alabama, area. The clinic offers a complete array of diagnostic and treatment services, including thoracic surgery by Dr Robert Cerfolio, M.D.

Cerfolio is an expert in fine-needle aspiration as a diagnostic technique for pleural mesothelioma.  In 2008 he wrote about the ultrasound-guided, minimally invasive version of this surgery. According to the team of researchers, no diagnostic errors or complications were noted in a study of this technique, which allows doctors to determine which patients might benefit from curative surgeries such as an extrapleural pneumonectomy. The article was published in the January 2008 issue of Diagnostic Cytopathology.

He later spoke about ultrasound examinations to detect the metastatic spread of lung cancer at the annual meeting of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He explained that high-risk patients might require more conclusive testing to guarantee accurate confirmation of a diagnosis.

For his research in esophageal and lung cancer surgeries as well as pulmonary diseases and chest wall pathology, Cerfolio was named the James H. Estes Endowed Chair for Lung Cancer Research in 2010. He also shares his knowledge with his students at the University of Alabama School of Medicine, where he teaches as the Chief of the Section of Thoracic Surgery.

As a team member at the Kirklin Clinic, Cerfolio contributes to a team that provides groundbreaking surgical and radiation techniques, nursing services and social services. The hospital believes that mesothelioma patients can face a better outlook when their treatment combines many different specialties, including operations for patients who are candidates for the procedures.

Some of the operations performed in the thoracic surgery unit at UAB include video-assisted thoracoscopic surgeries, lung surgery and robot-guided lobectomies. Cerfolio was educated in these techniques during his studies at the University of Rochester. He gained further surgical experience at the Hartford Hospital, along with urology studies at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. From 1991 until 1996, he also studied general surgery and cardiothoracic surgery during back-to-back fellowships at the Mayo Clinic.

Cerfolio belongs to the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the Western Thoracic Surgical Association. He has served on several workforces, including the Workforce on Evidence Based Surgery, the Tech-Con Task Force and the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons Abstract Reviewers Board.