Joshua R. Sonett is the Chief of General Thoracic Surgery, Surgical Director of Price Family Center for Comprehensive Chest Care, and an Attending Surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. He is also a Professor of Clinical Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Career

Sonett is best known for his work in the multidisciplinary treatment of lung and esophageal malignancies. Sonett and his team at Columbia work at developing and teaching techniques in Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) and Minimally Invasive Esophageal (MIE) surgery. Sonett and his team are one of the few centers in the country to use a combination of maximal chemotherapy and radiotherapy and surgery in the treatment of locally advanced lung malignancies. In lung transplantation, Sonett is best known for incorporating expanded criteria donor lungs into the Lung Transplant Program at Columbia. Sonett and his team have been aggressively trying to alleviate the donor shortage by evaluating lungs which may be rejected from other centers. Between 2001 and 2003, 53 percent of the lungs transplanted at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia were extended donor criteria lungs, with no difference in survival between EDC lung recipients and regular lung recipients. Sonett's program has a 95% survival rate after one year, and 83% after three years, which far surpasses the national average of 79% and 62%, respectively. Sonett was featured on NY Med.

Press coverage

Publications