Now, Burt offers his expertise to mesothelioma patients at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, where he is assistant professor of surgery. He also serves Baylor as director of general thoracic surgery research and associate chief of general thoracic surgery.
Caring for people with mesothelioma and other chest cancers is a privilege to Burt.
He offers two leading surgeries for pleural mesothelioma: Extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP) and pleurectomy/decortication (P/D).
EPP, a technique Sugarbaker developed, is an aggressive mesothelioma surgery that removes an entire lung and several other chest structures affected by cancer.
P/D allows patients to keep their lungs intact. For this surgery, Burt first removes the lining of the lungs and any chest structures where the cancer has spread. Next, he removes any visible tumor growth from the chest.
Burt received his medical degree from Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York. He completed residencies in general surgery and thoracic surgery at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is board certified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.
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In addition to mesothelioma, Burt has a clinical interest in lung cancer, esophageal cancer and cancers of the thymus. He is trained in video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS), a minimally invasive technique that uses smaller incisions than traditional surgery and has a shorter recovery time. Burt performs 40-50 VATS procedures on early-stage lung cancer patients each year.
As director of general thoracic surgery research at Baylor, Burt focuses his research efforts on developing innovative therapies doctors can give to mesothelioma patients during surgery.
In 2016, the National Cancer Institute awarded him a grant totaling nearly $80,000 for his research titled, “Allogenic Antibody Therapy for Malignant Mesothelioma.” He is investigating an immunotherapy technique that uses antibodies from healthy donors to treat people with mesothelioma. Burt plans to use the results of this laboratory study to develop an early-phase clinical trial for mesothelioma patients.
