New center for thoracic surgery at Phelps Hospital offers treatment for lung and chest diseases

A center for thoracic surgery has been
established at Phelps Memorial Hospital
Center under the direction of Dr. Avraham
Merav, a nationally known specialist in
the field of cardiothoracic surgery.
The Thoracic Center at Phelps is a multidisciplinary
service, where the thoracic
surgeon works closely with pulmonologists,
cardiologists, gastroenterologists,
oncologists, radiologists and other medical
specialists to provide patients with
prompt diagnosis and comprehensive
treatment. The Center specializes in minimally
invasive and traditional surgery for
all malignant and benign conditions
affecting the various organs of the human
chest: lungs, esophagus, mediastinum,
pleura, pericardium and chest wall.
“What makes the Thoracic Center at
Phelps unique is that we have a dedicated
thoracic surgeon who is on site full-time,
which is highly unusual, especially for a
communify hospital. A patient who is
referred to the Thoracic Center with a
problem is seen without delay and within
24-48 hours. Once we are able to diagnose
the patient’s problem, we can expedite initiating
treatment. Patients don’t need to
wait for weeks to get an appointment or to
travel between hospitals for diagnosis and
treatment. Everything is done in one
place,” says Dr. Merav.
According to Dr. Merav, patients who
are well into their late 80s and early 90s
are benefiting from the surgical expertise
offered at the Center. “These are people
who until recently would not have been
considered as candidates for thoracic surgery
because of a perceived high mortalify
rate. They would have forgone treatment
and suffered for the rest of their
often foreshortened lives with their disease,”
says Merav. “Older people should
laiow that they shouldn’t just give up on
themselves because of their age.”
Dr. Merav, who performs a majorify of
the operations, has .extensive personal
experience operating on elderly patients,
some of whom were tumed down by other
surgeons due to their advanced age.
“Older patients have to be very carefully
screened” he says, “but when properly
selected, excellent results can be
achieved.”
“At Phelps, we not only have an active
geriatric service with three full-time doctors,
we also have surgical capabilities for
treating older people,” says Dr. Merav. He
uses the minimally invasive VATS (videoassisted
thoracic surgery) technique in
more than 50% of his operations.
A cardiothoracic surgeon since 1975,,
Dr. Merav has performed more than 4,500
open-heart operations and niore than
3,500 thoracic operations (procedures on
organs other than the heart). He did pioneering
work on lung- transplantation
while at Montefiore Medical Center,
where he was Chief of Thoracic Surgery
from 1980-1981. Until last year, when Dr.
Merav decided to limit his practice to thoracic
surgery at Phelps, he was on staff at
Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx
and Englewood Medical Center in New
Jersey. Dr. Merav is an Associate
Professor of Clinical Cardiothoracic
Surgery at Albert Einstein College of
Medicine.
For more information about the
Thoracic Center at Phelps Hospital, call
914-366-2333.