- Alternative Medicine
- Mesothelioma Cure
- Mesothelioma Research
- Mesothelioma Doctors
- Mesothelioma Cancer Centers
- Mesothelioma Clinical Trials
Over 30 Billion dollars in trust fund money has been set aside for asbestos victims.
Get a Free copy of Surviving Mesothelioma, Lean on Me, or 100 Questions & Answers About Mesothelioma
Mesolink.org now offeres Free Assistance with VA Claims and other benefits.
Dr. Raja Michael Flores
Contact Information
- 1275 York Avenue, Room C-879, New York, New York 10021
- (212) 639-2806
- floresr@mskcc.org
Dr. Raja Michael Flores is on the staff at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, New York. He is an Associate Professor of cardiothoracic surgery. Dr. Flores graduated from New York University in 1988 with a B.A. in Biochemistry. He received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in 1992. He went on to do his General Surgery Internship at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. He completed the internship in 1993 and stayed at Columbia-Presbyterian to work on his residency in general surgery, which he completed in 1997.
To further his studies, Dr. Flores completed a clinical effectiveness program in 1997 at Harvard’s School of Public Health. In 1997 and 1998 he earned a thoracic oncology clinical research fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana Faber Cancer Institute/CALGB in Boston. The concentration for his fellowship was in chemotherapy, mesothelioma, lung cancer and clinical trials. Dr. Flores stayed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to complete his cardiothoracic surgery residency in 2000.
Among other things, much of Dr. Flores’s research is centered on lung cancer screening, intraoperative chemotherapy, extrapleural pneumonectomies for mesothelioma and other mesothelioma-related topics. Dr. Flores is an expert in malignant mesothelioma, the cancer that is caused by ingesting or inhaling fibers from asbestos. He has been the main investigator on numerous clinical trials related to this disease.
One of his most recent research studies involves a combination treatment for mesothelioma that starts by treating the patient with the chemotherapy drugs gemcitabine and cisplatin. The chemotherapy is followed up by an extrapleural pneumonectomy, or surgery that removes the affected lung and other areas around the lung that may be affected. This surgery is a very aggressive treatment and one that is considered to be extremely difficult. Very few patients are selected for this treatment and only a certain few doctors, including Dr. Flores, perform this surgery.
After the chemotherapy treatment and this difficult and invasive surgery, Dr. Flores follows up with high doses of radiation. Dr. Flores tests this treatment therapy with patients who volunteer for clinical trials and are determined to be good candidates for the treatment.
Because of his research and clinical trials with this tri-modal treatment for mesothelioma, Dr. Flores has put together a database of more than 1,000 mesothelioma patients. Using this database, Dr. Flores can study areas of failure and use this information to improve upon treatments for this deadly disease.
Since Dr. Flores is consistently conducting research in the field of malignant mesothelioma, he has been able to document this work in many prestigious journals of medicine, such as the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. His work can also be found in other journals, including articles that describe his work in thoracic malignancies and other lung disease.
Dr. Flores is a member of the American College of Chest Physicians, the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He has also received a variety of awards from these groups for the important work he has done in this field.