Surgical Oncology at the Crossroads: the Future is Now

Excerpt

I am aware that I would not have had this opportunity to serve as your President this past year were it not for the help of many others, and I wanted to recognize several individuals specifically. My surgical residency years in Chicago enabled me to work closely with David Skinner at the University of Chicago and Steven Economou at Rush University (Fig. 1). Dr. Skinner was a master of clarity in thought, articulation, and purposeful accomplishment. Dr. Economou was the first to show me the cognitive and technical aspects of our specialty. A practitioner of multidisciplinary oncology care long before the concept came into vogue, Dr. Economou was proof positive that cancer could be thought through and beaten back by knowledge coupled to an “eloquent scalpel”. Dr. Economou was the first to stimulate, and then encourage, my aspirations to become a surgical oncologist, and for this I will always be grateful.

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