Walter Weder MD
Professor and Chair

The Division of Thoracic Surgery at the University Hospital of Zurich is the largest thoracic surgical centre in Switzerland and offers the whole spectrum of general thoracic surgery. It includes especially a lung transplant program, a program for emphysema surgery  and a multidisciplinary centre for the treatment of thoracic malignancies. The division has a high focus on clinical and experimental research. Thoracic surgery at the University Hospital in Zurich has a long tradition and renowned surgeons like Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Alfred Brunner and others established the foundation for the division's development.

Areas of Specialzation:

• Minimal-invasiv thoracic surgery is applied in almost half of the procedures. The first thoracoscopic lobectomy in Zürich was performed in 1993 and the first robot-assisted thymectomy in 2004. Since then, these techniques are evaluated in comparison to other thoracic surgical approaches
• Multimodality treatment of lung cancer has a central role in our program and is accompanied with clinical and laboratory research which allows to apply the most modern treatment concepts
• Treatment of malignant pleural mesotheliomas with multimodality treatment including chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy
• A new technique for treatment of postpneumonectomy empyema has been established and is now used in many centres worldwide
• The first lung transplant in Switzerland was performed in Zurich in 1992
• The Division has one of the largest European database on surgery for  emphysema (lung volume reduction surgery)
• Experimental research is focused on three main topics: lung transplantation, lung cancer and malignant mesothelioma and tissue engineering