MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Alper Toker, M.D., has been named professor and chief of Thoracic Surgery at the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute and the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery in the WVU School of Medicine.
Dr. Toker came to WVU Medicine in 2019 and has served as interim chief of Thoracic Surgery for the last several months. He leads the tracheal surgery program and the thoracic surgical oncology program. He sees patients in both the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute and the WVU Cancer Institute.
“We were fortunate enough to recruit Dr. Toker to WVU and the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute, where he has worked to make WVU Medicine a national destination center for advanced thoracic surgery that includes reconstructive and robotic approaches and first-of-their-kind operations,” Vinay Badhwar, M.D., executive chair of the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute and chair of the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, said.
“Joined together with our superb Thoracic faculty, many of whom, like him, are providing national academic leadership, Dr. Toker is actively helping make our Thoracic Surgery Program one sought after by patients and providers from other states and other countries. I could not be prouder of the national prominence that our Thoracic Surgery Program has attained thanks to Dr. Toker and the Division’s excellent faculty.”
Toker began his postgraduate training in the Istanbul University Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery in 1992 and stayed on faculty first as an assistant professor, then associate professor, and then rising to the position of professor and head of Thoracic Surgery in 2009. He remained in this leadership role for the next decade, during which he was instrumental in growing the Istanbul thoracic surgery program to become one of the most respected in all of Europe.
Simultaneously, Toker also served in several leadership positions in the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons (ESTS), one of the most prominent associations dedicated to general thoracic surgery in the world.
An internationally recognized expert in robotic surgery, complex thoracic oncologic surgery, lung transplantation, and tracheal reconstruction, Toker was inducted into membership of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in 2014. In 2015, he was elected president of the ESTS, where he not only led the organization but helped foster collaboration with many international societies, such as the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
For more information on the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute, visit WVUMedicine.org/Heart.