General Info

Alan Kadison, MD, is a surgical oncologist at Northwell Health and assistant professor at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He became especially interested in pancreatic cancer as a medical student at SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, where he first participated in complex surgical procedures. His interest in the surgical management of cancer continued during his residency in general surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where he also spent a year in the lab doing pancreatic basic science research. Dr. Kadison likes the multidisciplinary aspects of surgical oncology, which involves coordinating patient care with his medical oncology and radiation medicine colleagues and participating in tumor boards. During his fellowship in surgical oncology at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Los Angeles, he learned the value of patient communication. “When talking to patients and explaining things to them, I quickly realized that people think of cancer in very dire terms, yet many early-stage cancers are very treatable,” he says. “When they hear that, you can see them relax and they feel empowered. The surgical oncologist is often the first cancer doctor a patient sees, so being positive and giving them hope is very important early in the process.” Dr. Kadison joined Northwell in 2003 and has been able to build programs, innovate and participate in clinical trials and translational research, while continuing to maintain a busy clinical practice. He started the peritoneal surface malignancy program in 2014. In 2019, he performed the first robotic mastectomy in the country, a surgery that requires only a small incision in the armpit, with no incision on the breast. That means less pain, faster recovery and a shorter hospital stay. He is principal investigator for Northwell on a multi-center national trial to get FDA approval for the procedure. As a member of the medical school faculty, Dr. Kadison teaches first- and third-year medical students, and he has been training residents in the General Surgery program at Northwell for the past two decades. “We opened an American Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Complex General Surgical Oncology fellowship program in 2021 to train future surgical oncologists, which is very exciting.”