Frank Detterbeck

Frank Detterbeck, MD, FACS, FCCP, is a professor of surgery and chief of Thoracic Surgery at Yale University and associate director of the Yale Cancer Center. He earned a BS in Cell Biology at the University of Michigan, and an MD degree from Northwestern University. After completing general surgery training at the Virginia Mason Clinic in Seattle, he pursued a cardiothoracic fellowship and a fellowship in thoracic transplantation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He rose to the rank of professor of surgery at the University of North Carolina during a long tenure there before being recruited to Yale University in 2005. The major focus of his career has been on thoracic oncology. In particular, he has promoted evidence-based care and multidisciplinary teamwork. He has written extensively on these and other topics, with over 150 papers and book chapters. He holds leadership positions in many of the major professional societies associated with thoracic surgery and has given invited lectures on a wide variety of topics at many institutions and international meetings. 

He specializes in the surgical treatment of lung cancer, lung metastases, esophageal cancer, thymoma, mediastinal tumors, chest wall tumors, Pancoast tumors, mesothelioma, and sarcoma. The majority of his thoracic/chest surgeries are performed using minimally invasive techniques. His clinical research includes cancer biology, cancer imaging techniques, prognostic markers of cancers, multimodality (multiple therapies for) treatment of cancer, and evidence-based medicine.