Difficult Decisions in Endocrine Surgery: An Evidence-based Approach

Dr Benjamin James is the Chief of General Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. James received his M.D. from Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in 2008. He completed his general surgery residency at Penn State Hershey Medical Center (Alpha Omega Alpha) and served as the administrative chief resident in his final year of training (2013). He then completed an endocrine surgery fellowship at the University of Chicago (2014). Following this, he obtained a Masters in Public Health Sciences at the University of Chicago and completed an Endocrine Surgery Research Fellowship (2015). He is Board-certified in Surgery. Dr. James is an endocrine surgeon with extensive knowledge in endocrine surgery. He has made scientific contributions in healthcare expansion impact on endocrine surgery, quality of life in thyroid cancer survivors, financial toxicity in thyroid cancer survivors, minimally-invasive parathyroidectomy, intraoperative PTH monitoring, pediatric thyroid cancer and has authored multiple book chapters in endocrine surgery. His research has been funded by the American College of Surgeons, American Association of Endocrine Surgeons and the American Society of Transplantation. He is a Councilor for the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons.

Dr Raymon H. Grogan is a board certified surgeon specializing in Endocrine Surgery for the Houston and surrounding area (Bryan-College Station, Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Beaumont). He has helped co-author several national guidelines in the area of endocrine surgery and is a well-respected surgeon nationally internationally. In addition to having expertise in the traditional surgical approaches to thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal, and endocrine pancreas diseases Dr. Grogan is a pioneer of techniques for operating on the thyroid and parathyroid. He is one of only a few experts in the United States on Transoral Endocrine Surgery (TES), a novel approach to surgery for both thyroid and parathyroid disease that leaves no visible scar on the neck. Dr. Grogan was one of the first surgeons to perform this operation in the United States, and the first surgeon to perform this operation in Chicago, the Midwest, and Texas. He is also an expert in other forms of minimally invasive thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal surgery. In addition to being a full-time clinical surgeon, Dr. Grogan also runs a well-known translational research program. He has a Master of Science with a focus on epidemiology and biostatistics. He is the Principal Investigator and founder of the North American Thyroid Cancer Survivorship Study, which is a longitudinal cohort study that currently has nearly 3,000 participants enrolled and continues to expand. Through this work Dr. Grogan has published several novel findings related to thyroid cancer survivorship and has helped start a national discussion on ways to improve quality of life in these patients. Inaddition to this Dr. Grogan has published several papers on health outcomes related to endocrine surgery as well as translational papers on the genetics and epidemiology of endocrine diseases. Most recently Dr. Grogan has begun research on the relationship between the human microbiome and thyroid disease. In 2017 he was awarded the prestigious Paul LoGerfo Research Grant from the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons to study this relationship.

Peter Angelos, MD, PhD, FACS, MAMSE is the Linda Kohler Anderson Professor of Surgery and Surgical Ethics, Chief of Endocrine Surgery, and Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. He completed his undergraduate degree, medical school, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Boston University. He completed his residency in General Surgery at Northwestern University and went on to complete fellowships in Clinical Ethics at the University of Chicago and in Endocrine Surgery at the University of Michigan. Dr. Angelos has written widely on improving outcomes of thyroid and parathyroid surgery, minimally invasive endocrine surgery, and ethical aspects in the surgical care of patients. He is past president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, Councillor of the American Board of Surgery, member of the Board of Directors of the American Thyroid Association, and a past Governor of the American College of Surgeons.