Dr. Henning A. Gaissert

About Henning A. Gaissert

Accolades

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  Board Certified in Thoracic Surgery

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  Pleural and Lung Cancer

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  Team Leader

At Newton-Wellesley, Gaissert oversees the Thoracic Surgery Department. This department handles the treatment of chest tumors with a multidisciplinary approach that includes oncologists, pathologists, radiologists and surgeons.

Newton-Wellesley’s thoracic surgery team treats esophageal and lung cancers. In addition, they perform surgery to treat hyperhidrosis, myasthenia gravis and thymoma.

Gaissert also plays a prominent role in the acclaimed Thoracic Surgery Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He has experience with a variety of thoracic diseases, including lung cancer and pleural mesothelioma.

The Center for Thoracic Cancers at MGH was one of the first in the country to use novel targeted therapies for certain types of chest cancer. Its innovative approach to clinical care includes:

• Individualizing cancer treatment by genotyping, which can identify more effective targeted therapies based on genetic mutations.
• Minimally-invasive, video-assisted surgery to reduce recovery time and shorten hospital stays.
• One of New England’s only proton therapy facilities.

Vast and Varied Experience

Gaissert is involved in the Lung Transplantation Program at MGH, which requires a wide range of specialists. This program dedicates a personal care team to quality-of-life issues for each patient.

MGH also performs transplants of the kidney, liver, heart and pancreas. The facility offers heart-lung combination transplants as well.

Gaissert’s other specialties include emphysema, volume reduction surgery and tracheobronchial disorders.

Before coming to MGH and Newton-Wellesley, Gaissert led the thoracic surgery team at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University. He served his internship and residency in surgery at MGH and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

He received his medical degree from the Technical University Munich Faculty of Medicine. He was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany.

Gaissert has published on a variety of research topics. He was the lead author in a Journal of Thoracic Cardiovascular Surgery study that examined the impact of induction therapy on operative mortality after lung cancer resection.

He also wrote about long-term survival following tumor cell resection of the trachea and carina. He has written about the operative risks of pneumonectomy and the influence of preoperative induction therapy.

In 2017, he was part of a study published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery that examined mortality and respiratory failure after thoracoscopic lung biopsy.

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