Biography
Dr. Sudhir Sundaresan is Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the Ottawa Hospital, and Chair of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Ottawa. He is also Site Chief of Surgery and Chair of the Operating Room Committee at the General Campus.
Appointments and affiliations
- Active Staff, The Ottawa Hospital, Division of Thoracic Surgery/Department of surgery
- Professor and Chair, Division of Thoracic Surgery, University of Ottawa
- Site Lead, Thoracic Cancer Assessment Center, the Ottawa Hospital
- Site Chief of Surgery and Head, Operating Room Committee, Ottawa Hospital-General Campus
- Memberships of College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Fellow, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, American College of Chest Physicians, Society of Thoracic Surgeons, American College of Surgeons, American Association for Thoracic Surgery, Canadian Association of Thoracic Surgeons, Ontario Medical Association, Chair, Thoracic Exam Board, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada
Background
Dr. Sundaresan completed his undergraduate studies in the Biology Program at Carleton University and then obtained his MD at the University of Ottawa. This was followed by a Rotating Internship at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Residency in General Surgery at the University of Ottawa. He went on to do is Fellowship training in Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine/Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri. He also undertook a 2-year Research Fellowship in Lung Transplantation there. Finally, he spent six months as Senior Registrar to Professor Hugo Matthews at the East Birmingham Hospital, UK, receiving advanced fellowship training in esophageal surgery. Dr. Sundaresan began his career in St. Louis as Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, where he served for nearly six years. His clinical and research focus was in lung transplantation. He directed basic laboratory investigation in cellular immunology and molecular biology of chronic lung rejection and held several grants from the Veterans Administration and National Institutes of Health. He was later recruited as Associate Professor and Chief of the Section of Thoracic Surgery at Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. While his interests in lung transplantation continued [as Director of the Pediatric Lung Transplant Program at the Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago], his career focus centered on thoracic oncology. During his four years there, he developed programs in multi-modality therapy for lung and esophageal cancer, airway surgery, mesothelioma, and laser therapy/photodynamic therapy. He served as a national Principal Investigator for the American College of Surgeons Oncology Trials Group [ACOSOG]. He joined the Ottawa Hospital in 2002, where his primary interests have continued in thoracic oncology and in minimally invasive thoracic surgery. He chaired a Cancer Care Ontario provincial panel that published, and he has spoken on the subject of regionalization of thoracic surgery nationally and internationally.