Dr. Wickii Vigneswaran

About Dr. Wickii Vigneswaran

Dr. Vigneswaran is a thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon at Loyola University Medical Center, serving as the division director of Thoracic Surgery. He is also the system medical director of Thoracic Surgery for Edward-Elmhurst Health.

He has worked extensively with pleural mesothelioma and uses minimally invasive surgical techniques, such as robotic and video-assisted procedures.

Much of his research focuses on the effect of treatments, such as pleurectomy with decortication (P/D), on patients’ quality of life.

Career Highlights

Some of Dr. Vigneswaran’s career accomplishments include:

• Authored more than 100 articles and book chapters and edited three books about lung transplantation and thoracic surgery
• Helped improve the staging system for pleural mesothelioma
• Pioneered the use of robotic or video-assisted thoracic surgery

Awards & Honors

Dr. Vigneswaran is the recipient of several awards and honors, including:

• American Chemical Society Fellow
• Chicago Magazine: Top Doctors
• CMS Stage 1 EHR

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Dr. Vigneswaran’s Background & Qualifications

Dr. Vigneswaran earned his medical degree from the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka.

Upon graduation, he completed a residency in emergency medicine at the Walsall General Hospital, a residency in anesthesiology at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, and a residency in general surgery at Freeman Hospital, all located in England.

Dr. Vigneswaran completed his first residency in thoracic surgery at the Royal Infirmary of Glasgow, followed by a second residency in thoracic surgery at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He later completed a series of fellowships in thoracic surgery in Canada and the United States.

Dr. Vigneswaran is a member of many professional associations, including:

• American College of Chest Physicians
• American College of Surgeons
• American Medical Association
• International College of Surgeons
• Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Canada
• Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburg, Scotland
• Royal Society of Medicine
• Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

Medical Specializations

Dr. Vigneswaran specializes in treating pleural mesothelioma using robotic-assisted surgery and video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS).

VATS is a minimally invasive procedure that uses small incisions and cameras to guide the surgeon while he is performing the operations.

Notable Work by Dr. Vigneswaran

One of the studies that Dr. Vigneswaran led examined the current staging system for pleural mesothelioma. If researchers can improve the scoring system, it can lead to more accurate prognoses and help guide the treatment.

The current staging system is tumor/node/metastasis (TNM), which looks at the size of the tumor, whether or not it has spread to nearby lymph nodes, and if it has spread to other parts of the body. However, while this system works well for some lung cancers, it is less effective at staging mesothelioma.

To help improve the pleural mesothelioma staging system, Dr. Vigneswaran and his team studied whether or not a mesothelioma tumor’s size could predict a patient’s prognosis.

His team confirmed that larger tumors were related to decreased survival times. By officially establishing the connection between tumor size and survival rates, researchers can fix the staging system to be more accurate.

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Improving Patient Quality of Life

Dr. Vigneswaran has studied the quality of life in patients who have undergone a P/D procedure. He was inspired to explore this when he realized that many individuals avoided having surgery because they feared it would lower their quality of life.

However, because P/D can prolong a patient’s life and many surgeons will recommend it as a treatment for pleural mesothelioma, he wanted to put his patients’ minds at ease.

Dr. Vigneswaran and his team surveyed more than 100 patients before and one month, 4-5 months, 7-8 months, and 10-11 months after they had P/D surgery to see how they rated their quality of life.

All patients surveyed reported that their quality of life improved in the month following the procedure and continued to improve as time went on.

The survey questions covered various aspects of a patient’s quality of life, including:

• How they felt they were functioning physically and emotionally
• If they experienced shortness of breath or insomnia
• Whether or not they were fatigued continuously

Dr. Vigneswaran’s Healing Philosophy

Dr. Vigneswaran advocates for a patient’s quality of life and focuses on minimally invasive procedures.

“We have multidisciplinary cancer care. The unique thing about Loyola is actually the patients are seen by the multiple specialists who are going to be involved in their care at the same time, during the same settings.

We all discuss about the patient on the day they are here, and then we really give the message to the patient at the same time as a group.”
— Dr. Wickii Vigneswaran