New Center for Thoracic Surgery

Advanced and Minimally Invasive Treatment for Lung and Other Chest Diseases

A center for thoracic surgery has been established at Phelps Memorial Hospital Center under the direction of Dr. Avraham Merav, a renowned specialist in the field of cardiothoracic surgery.

The Thoracic Center at Phelps is a multidisciplinary service, where the thoracic surgeon works closely with pulmonologists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, oncologists, radiologists and other medical specialists to provide patients with prompt diagnosis and comprehensive treatment. The Center specializes in minimally invasive and traditional surgery for all malignant and benign conditions affecting the various organs of the human chest: lungs, esophagus, mediastinum, pleura, pericardium and chest wall.

"What makes the Thoracic Center at Phelps unique is that we have a dedicated thoracic surgeon who is on site full-time, which is highly unusual, especially for a community hospital. A patient who is referred to Phelps Thoracic Center with a problem is seen without delay and within 24-48 hours. Once we are able to diagnose the patient's problem, we can expedite initiating treatment. Patients don't need to wait for weeks to get an appointment or to travel between hospitals for diagnosis and treatment. Everything is done in one place," says Dr. Merav.

According to Dr. Merav, patients who are well into their late 80s and early 90s are benefiting from the surgical expertise offered at the Center. "These are people who until recently would not have been considered as candidates for thoracic surgery because of a perceived high mortality rate. They would have forgone treatment and suffered for the rest of their often foreshortened lives with their disease," says Merav. "Older people should know that they shouldn't just give up on themselves because of their age."

Dr. Merav, who performs a majority of the operations, has extensive personal experience operating on elderly patients, some of whom were turned down by other surgeons due to their advanced age. "Older patients have to be very carefully screened" he says, "but when properly selected, excellent results can be achieved."

"At Phelps, we not only have an active geriatric service with three full-time doctors, we also have surgical capabilities for treating older people," says Merav. He uses the minimally invasive VATS (video-assisted thoracic surgery) technique in more than 50% of his operations.

A cardiothoracic surgeon since 1975, Dr. Merav has performed more than 4,500 open heart operations and more than 3,500 thoracic operations (procedures on organs other than the heart). He did pioneering work on lung transplantation while at Montefiore Medical Center, where he was Chief of Thoracic Surgery from 1980-1981. Until last year, when Dr. Merav decided to limit his practice to thoracic surgery at Phelps, he was on staff at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx and Englewood Medical Center in New Jersey. Dr. Merav is an Associate Professor of Clinical Cardiothoracic Surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

For more information about thoracic surgery, read "Inside the Chest."
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