Peter Wiklund, MD, PhD
Peter Wiklund, MD, PhD, a world-renowned surgeon who pioneered robot-assisted cystectomy, has been appointed Director of the Bladder Cancer Program at the Mount Sinai Health System and Professor of Urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The appointment marks a significant expansion for the Milton and Carroll Petrie Department of Urology, which also has leading programs in two other major areas in which robot-assisted surgery is used—prostate and kidney cases.
“With this important appointment, Mount Sinai will be able to build a strong bladder cancer program and offer more comprehensive services to patients while also enriching our training and research initiatives,” says Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh, the Kyung Hyun Kim, MD Chair in Urology, Mount Sinai Health System. “Dr. Wiklund has trained urologists around the world and established an international reputation as a leading clinician, researcher, and educator. He will now bring that expertise to Mount Sinai and to New York.”
Mount Sinai’s Department of Urology has long been a leader in robotic procedures. These minimally invasive procedures, which doctors perform using special instruments inserted through tiny incisions, offer many advantages over conventional open surgery, including less pain after surgery, shorter hospital stays, and quicker return to normal activities for patients.
The benefits are typically more significant for more extensive procedures, such as removal of the bladder and reconstruction of the urinary tract, which Dr. Wiklund has pioneered for bladder cancer surgery. More extensive surgery is often required because bladder cancers tend to be more aggressive.
“We will be building the same kind of program at Mount Sinai that I have done before, which involves far more than focusing only on what happens in the operating room,” says Dr. Wiklund. “We will need to build teams to prepare patients before surgery, and then continue to follow them afterward with a goal to achieve even better patient outcomes, which has been one focus of my research.” The Mount Sinai Health System has more than 190 urologists on staff , more than any other health care system in New York City.
Previously, Dr. Wiklund was Chair of Urology, Molecular Medicine, and Surgery, and Professor of Urology, at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, where he built a leading cystectomy program, which involves the removal of the urinary bladder. Each year, faculty members at the Karolinska Institutet select those who receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Dr. Wiklund has performed more than 3,000 robotic operations and has extensive experience in advanced oncological surgery in patients whose tumor is growing on several pelvic organs (multiorgan tumor, bladder, prostate, colorectal, ovarian, and uterine), performing live educational surgeries throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. He is chair of the scientific working group of the European Urology Robotic Section of the European Association of Urology and is an international member of the American Urological Association. He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and 30 review articles and has been the editor and contributing author for three textbooks on robot-assisted surgery.
“Throughout my career, I have combined clinical practice with original research, and I expect that to continue,” says Dr. Wiklund. “Bladder cancer surgery can be an extensive operation, and we generally follow patients for their lifetimes. By closely following our patients after surgery, we can study how to improve their lives and quicken their recovery.”