“The field of endocrine surgery is fascinating,” says Sara Abou Azar, MD, an Endocrine Surgeon in the Department of Surgical Oncology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. “The operations are precise and delicate and we’re helping patients improve their quality of life in a really meaningful way.”
Dr. Abou Azar’s research is focused on clinical outcomes and health services research, in addition to improving the quality of life for patients. She also has published papers on medullary thyroid cancer in addition to mutations in papillary cancer and how those can impact treatment options and outcomes.
In the next five to 10 years, Dr. Abou Azar anticipates great strides will be made toward more precise medicine and treatment for endocrine patients, making it “more precise, more personalized and less invasive. Targeted therapy and new systemic therapy will improve and expand our options for treating aggressive tumors.”
Hi, my name is Sarah Boazar. I'm an endocrine surgeon at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. I treat benign and complex endocrine disorders. Those include tumors of the thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenal glands. I went to medical school at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. The field of endocrine surgery is fascinating. The operations are precise and delicate, and we're helping patients improve their quality of life in a really meaningful way. My research mainly focuses on clinical outcomes and health services research in addition to quality improvement. I'm currently focusing on clinical outcomes in thyroid surgery, adrenal surgery, and. Parathyroid diseases. I've published several papers that looked at clinical outcomes in medullary thyroid cancer in addition to BRAF mutation statuses in papillary thyroid cancer and how it affects prognosis and recur progression free survival. I also have done research in pheochromocytoma and adrenal cancer using large databases such as the NCDB. Right now we're looking at outcomes in tall cell pap. thyroid cancer, which is a subtype of papillary thyroid cancer at Roswell. There are a lot of things that are exciting in the field in terms of the diagnostics. We're looking at utilizing more of molecular testing and using that to guide our precision guided therapies, and this is important for us because we can use this genetic information to see which patients would respond better to certain treatments in the future that. In addition to using more minimally invasive techniques, the robotic approach in adrenal surgery and radiofrequency ablation, nowadays radiofrequency ablation can be used to treat thyroid nodules, usually less than 5 centimeters that are benign on cytology. Elsewhere around the world, they're doing a lot of studies that are actually looking into treatment of thyroid cancers less than 2 centimeters in size with radiofrequency ablation. Over the next 5 to 10 years, I see a lot of improvement in our field. As of now, the field is becoming more precise, more personalized, and less invasive. We have new diagnostic tools that use molecular profiling as well as AI enhanced imaging that can help us decide. Which patients will benefit from surgery and which cancers are safe to observe at the same time targeted therapy and new systemic therapy will improve and actually expand our options for treating aggressive tumors, thyroid cancer, and adrenal cancers in the future. All of which means better outcomes, decreased complications, and improved quality of care for our patients. Roswell Park is a comprehensive cancer center that houses expertise from different fields that all work together in a coordinated fashion to provide care for the patients. I wanted it to be at a place where it combines world class cancer care uh with a real sense of mission. Roswell Park has this incredible legacy of discovery and innovation, but it's also a community where people really want to take care of each other and take care of their patients.
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