Joshua Sonett

Joshua R. Sonett MD FACS is the Chief of General Thoracic Surgery, Surgical Director of Price Family Center for Comprehensive Chest Care,t, 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. He is instrumental in making the Thoracic Surgery program at Columbia University one of the best in the US and is one of the youngest Professors of Surgery at the major academic institutions in the United States. Dr. Sonett is best known for his work in the multidisciplinary treatment of lung and esophageal malignancies. Leading work in minimally invasive treatment of lung and esophageal cancer. Dr. Sonett and his team at Columbia are leaders developing and teaching techniques in Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) and Minimally Invasive Esophageal (MIE) surgery, allowing surgeons to incorporate these techniques into their daily practices. Dr. 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, Dr Sonett is best known for incorporating extended donor criteria lungs into the Lung Transplant Program at Columbia. Extended donor criteria (EDC) applies to the use of organs that don't meet the usual criteria for transplantation due to various health problems, but are still healthy enough for a successful transplant (Liver MD 2006). Sonett and his team have been aggressively trying to alleviate the donor shortage by evaluating lungs which may be rejected from other centers (CS News 2005). 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 (CS Lung News 2006). Sonett received the Chesed Humanitarian Award for excellent medical/surgical care in the Rockland community in 2007 (CS Thoracic News 2005). He has been featured in New York Magazine’s Best Doctors consecutively from 2002-2009 (Castle Connolly 2007).

Press coverage

• On March 10, 2005, Sonett performed a pleural decortication on former President Bill Clinton to remove a thick band of hard scar tissue that had built up as a complication of his quadruple heart bypass operation in September 2004 (NY Times 2005).
• On February 16, 2005, Sonett was featured in a New York Times article, "Linked Forever by the Ultimate Gift: One Woman's Death Provides Life for Another," by Marc Santora. The article depicted the path of a lung transplant, from the family's decision to donate to the transplant operation and the recipient's recovery (CS Thoracic News 2005).

Publications

• Induction curative intent radiotherapy (>59Gy) and concurrent chemotherapy with surgical resection in locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer: Operative feasibility and mid-term survival. Sonett, J.R., Suntharalingam, M., Edelman, M.J., Patel, A.B., et al. The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, October 2004.
• Expression of syndecan-1 and expression of epidermal growth factor receptor are associated with survival in patients with nonsmall cell lung carcinoma. Shah L., Walter KL, Borczuk AC, Kawut SM, Sonett JR, et al. Cancer, August 23, 2004.
• The course of neurofibromatiosis Type 1 on immunosuppression after lung transplantation: Report of 2 cases. Merlo, C.A., Studer, S.M., Conte, J.V., Yang, S.C., Sonett, J.R., Orens, J.B. Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, 23:774-6, 2004.
• Extracellular regulated kinase/mitogen activated protein kinase is up-regulated in pulmonary emphysema and mediates matrix metalloproteinase-1 induction by cigarette smoke. Mercer, B.A., Kolesnikova N, Sonett, J.R., D’Armiento J. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 279(19): 17690-6, April 23, 2004