School of Medicine


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  • Leah Backhus, MD, MPH, FACS

    Leah Backhus, MD, MPH, FACS

    Associate Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery (Thoracic Surgery) at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System

    Bio Leah Backhus trained in general surgery at the University of Southern California and cardiothoracic surgery at the University of California Los Angeles. She practices at Stanford Hospital and is Chief of Thoracic Surgery at the VA Palo Alto. Her surgical practice consists of general thoracic surgery with special emphasis on thoracic oncology and minimally invasive surgical techniques. She is also involved in research with the Thoracic Surgical Health Services Research group, and has grant funding through the Veterans Affairs Administration. Her current research interests are in imaging surveillance following treatment for lung cancer and cancer survivorship. She is a member of the National Lung Cancer Roundtable of the American Cancer Society serving as Chair of the Task Group on Lung Cancer in Women. She also serves as a professional member of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Advisory Panel on Improving Healthcare Systems. As an educator, Dr. Backhus is the Associate Program Director for the Thoracic Track Residency and serves on the ACGME Residency Review Committee for Thoracic Surgery which is the accrediting body for all cardiothoracic surgery training programs in the US.

  • Mark Berry, MD

    Mark Berry, MD

    Associate Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery (Thoracic Surgery) at the Stanford University Medical Center

    Bio Dr. Berry joined the Division of Thoracic Surgery at Stanford in August 2014. He came to Stanford from Duke University, where he had most recently served as Associate Professor. He received his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine after receiving bachelors and masters degrees in Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his residency in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Duke University Medical Center after performing a residency in General Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. His Cardiothoracic Surgical training included a year dedicated to Minimally Invasive General Thoracic Surgery, a period that also included an American Association for Thoracic Surgery sponsored Traveling Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh.

    Dr. Berry practices all aspects of thoracic surgery, including procedures for benign and malignant conditions of the lung, esophagus, and mediastinum. He has a particular interest in minimally invasive techniques, and has extensive experience in treating thoracic surgical conditions using video-assisted thoracoscopic surgical (VATS), laparoscopic, robotic, endoscopic, and bronchoscopic approaches. He serves as the co-Director of the Stanford Minimally Invasive Thoracic Surgery Center (SMITS), and has both directed and taught in several minimally invasive thoracic surgery courses.

    Dr. Berry also has a Masters of Health Sciences in Clinical Research from Duke University. His clinical research activities mirror his clinical interests and activities in optimizing short-term and long-term outcomes of patients with thoracic surgical conditions. He has more than sixty peer-reviewed publications, most of which are related to both the use of minimally invasive thoracic surgical techniques as well as evaluating outcomes after treatment of thoracic malignancies. His clinical practice and his research both focus on choosing the most appropriate treatment and approach for patients based on the individual characteristics of the patient and their disease process.

  • Peter Chiu

    Peter Chiu

    Resident in Cardiothoracic Surgery

    Current Research and Scholarly Interests Randomized control trials are extraordinarily expensive in cardiac surgery. As such, these are not always feasible. My research is focused on applying causal inference techniques to observational data in order to better evaluate the comparative effectiveness of competing treatment methods in the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

  • Natalie Lui, MD

    Natalie Lui, MD

    Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery (Thoracic Surgery) at the Stanford University Medical Center

    Bio Dr. Lui studied physics as an undergraduate at Harvard before attending medical school at Johns Hopkins. She completed a general surgery residency at the University of California San Francisco, which included two years of research in the UCSF Thoracic Oncology Laboratory and completion of a Master in Advanced Studies in clinical research. Dr. Lui went on to hold a fellowship in Thoracic Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, during which she participated in visiting rotations at Memorial Sloan Kettering and the Mayo Clinic.

    Dr. Lui’s clinical focus extends to all aspects of general thoracic surgical diseases, and her research focus will be clinical and translational. She is excited to be back in California and looking forward to the warm weather, good food, and beautiful outdoors.