Our most important project is the Kristen Ann Carr fellow, an experienced doctor who studies and treats sarcomas in Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Department of Surgery. The doctor's training is supervised by Dr. Murray Brennan, chief of MSKCC's Department of Surgery and a world-renowned sarcoma expert.

Part of what the Fellowship accomplishes is an increased number of physicians with sarcoma expertise, which remains rare. Our first fellow, Dr. Jonathan Lewis, is now in private practice in the New York City area. The 1999 fellow is Dr. Martin Weiser, currently completing an additional one-year fellowship at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. The '98 fellow, Dr. David Linehan, is now on staff at Washington University in St. Louis. Previous fellows work at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (Rutgers) and the University of Washington in Seattle. Each of these doctors, personally selected for the fellowship by Dr. Brennan, Kristen's friend and physician, brings to the place where he works a special interest in and knowledge of sarcoma treatment. This may not seem like much, but when Kristen was diagnosed in 1991, Dr. Brennan was one of only two or three surgeons in the United States with experience in treating her tumor. We were lucky enough to live near MSKCC. Today's sarcoma patients have a much greater chance of being treated by an expert-and that's a key to survival.

Because our fellows are increasingly spread out across the country (and because almost all of them work in teaching hospitals, spreading sarcoma expertise yet further), today's sarcoma patients have an even greater chance of being treated near their homes. That means, among other things, being closer to the various kinds of nonmedical support each patient needs and often best receives from family and friends.

That's what the Kristen Ann Carr Fellowship is really all about-a chance to get every sarcoma patient to an expert with experience in treating these rare and capricious tumors, and to do it with the greatest comfort to the patient. Additionally, all of our fellows are experienced laboratory researchers, involved in investigational procedures and medicines. But the basics start with expertise and patient comfort.

KRISTEN ANN CARR FUND SURGICAL FELLOWS – Where are they now?