Dr. James Eastham, Chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Urology Service, is a surgeon who specializes in nerve-sparing radical prostatectomy and salvage radical prostatectomy.
Prostatepedia spoke with him recently about surgical options when cancer comes back after initial treatment.
Why did you become a doctor?
Dr. James Eastham: I didn’t decide to become a doctor until my third year of college. I was a chemistry major.
I had worked in the laboratory and thought I wanted to work more with people. I had a science background and lots of friends who were pre-med. They thought that being a physician would be something that I might enjoy, so I took the appropriate classes and exams and was fortunate enough to get into medical school.
That is how I became a doctor.
Why did you choose surgery as opposed to another specialty?
Dr. Eastham: I enjoyed the care of surgical patients. I was very interested in anatomy and how the illnesses that require surgery were, in many ways, based on anatomy. I liked the technical aspects of doing surgery. I liked the hands-on approach and the anatomy that is involved.
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