Crossroads salutes Robert Cerfolio, M.D., professor of surgery, chief of thoracic surgery and UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center scientist. Dr. Cerfolio’s work focuses on the research and treatment of cancers in the chest, particularly lung cancer; he has written extensively about new, more effective and less painful ways of performing lung surgery that are more beneficial to patients. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Dr. Cerfolio has served as a visiting professor in prestigious hospitals around the world, including China, England, Germany, Sweden and Brazil.
UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Scientist Robert Cerfolio, M.D., uses many sports analogies to describe his life. Indeed, the discipline and motivation he acquired as an All-American Baseball Player in college explains a great deal as to how this dynamic physician-researcher has become one of the busiest and most respected surgeons in the world.
Finding a Career Path
Growing up in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, Dr. Cerfolio was always fascinated by medicine. His father, Robert, is a urologist, and his mother, LaVerne, a nurse. Health care wasn’t his only interest, however. Sports played a major role in the younger Cerfolio’s life.
In 1980 Dr. Cerfolio was named an All-American high school athlete in recognition of receiving All-State honors in all three sports (hockey, baseball and football) that he competed. He continued to play hockey and baseball through college at the University of Rochester (New York), earning the honor of First-Team College Academic All-American for the latter. There came a point, however, when he knew that he had to make a choice. “I had to decide between sports and medicine. My dad actually made it clear which direction my future would be meaningful to others,” he recalls, laughing.
At Rochester Dr. Cerfolio enrolled in the university’s medical school as a sophomore through an early selection program. After receiving his M.D. in 1988, he began general surgical training at the University of Connecticut’s St. Francis Hospital. It was during this time that he met his wife, the former Lorraine Mojcik, who was working as an obstetric nurse. Following their marriage, he matched in urology at Cornell University Medical College/Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. There he became interested in cardiothoracic surgery, particularly the thoracic aspect, which involves the lungs and upper chest area of the body. He left New York in 1991 to finish his general surgical training at the Mayo Clinic, where he also completed his cardiothoracic fellowship.
UAB Comes Calling
While at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Cerfolio had a visit from renowned UAB surgeon Albert Pacifico, M.D. “There’s a really strong connection between the Mayo Clinic and UAB, with a great deal of shared research and personnel between the two,” Dr. Cerfolio says. “When Dr. Pacifico came up, he offered me a job, and I’ve been at UAB ever since.”
That was in 1996, and in just over a decade, Dr. Cerfolio has become an internationally renowned surgeon and clinical researcher and is, literally, one of the busiest thoracic surgeons in the world.
“The average thoracic surgeon does about 200 surgeries a year, and probably less than 1 percent do more than 500,” he says. “I do 1,200 a year.”
Unfortunately, Alabama provides many of Dr. Cerfolio’s patients, because it has one of the highest rates of lung cancer in the nation. “Lung cancer is the number-one cancer killer,” he says. “If you take the second-, third- and fourth-leading cancers, lung cancer will still kill more than all three of those cancers combined.
“Ninety percent of men and 80 percent of women [with the disease] are smokers,” he adds. “It’s frustrating to take care of a disease that is largely preventable through education.”
Dr. Cerfolio maintains an extremely busy schedule, with patients coming from across the United States and even other countries. “When you get a title like ‘the busiest thoracic surgeon in the world,’ you have to defend it, so I’m busier than ever. I used to be relatively young-looking,” he says, laughing.
Dr. Cerfolio credits his clinical team and UAB for the support, facilities and equipment to treat so many patients. And while he does treat so many, he makes a special point of spending time with each of his patients’ families. He is quick to acknowledge that his schedule is challenging, but that is one of his motivations. “In surgery, it’s just you in the operating room, with no one to come bail you out,” he says. “In sports, what you did yesterday doesn’t help you today. You have to wake up the next day and perform under pressure. That’s what surgery is. I can do 11 operations in one day, and those families will be happy and the patient doing well, but I’m going to be back under the gun the next day. That challenge is what makes life worth living.”
A Day in the Life
A typical day for Dr. Cerfolio begins around 6:00 a.m. when he consults with his residents, prior to arriving at the operating room at 7:00 a.m. He typically does eight to 10 cases daily, finishing around 3:30 p.m., followed by an hour of academic work on ongoing research projects and journal articles. “After that is when my day really starts,” he says.
Dr. Cerfolio’s three sons—Robert Michael, 15; Alec James, 12; and Matthew Cole, 10—are all extremely involved in athletics, and Dr. Cerfolio coaches most all of their respective teams. These include two baseball teams, two basketball teams and a hockey team, which usually means at least one game or practice session every night. After coaching, he and his wife help their sons with homework, and he then finishes his day with another hour of academic work. Then he plays hockey a few times a week from 9 -11 p.m. at night.
“We have a very unusual life and I have the most incredibly supportive and loving wife,” he says. “I’m very motivated into pushing everyone to do the best they can do, and that starts with me and my kids. My family is the foundation that all this work is based on and without them most of my achievements are meaningless.”
Though Dr. Cerfolio admits that his schedule is stressful and sometimes taxing, he remains inspired by the daily challenge his job requires. “I’m always trying to teach my children about self-motivation or what I call the fire from within,” he says. “That’s what life is all about. It’s your desire to achieve and the amount of hard work you are willing to put into it to achieve that goal that separates you from the rest. I still have that fire from within. The next day’s challenges - surgical, academic and athletic - are what get me out of bed early each morning.”
