Dr. Gail Darling is a Professor of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Toronto. She is a Thoracic Surgeon at University Health Network and Director of Thoracic Surgery Clinical Research at Toronto General Hospital. She was Program Director of the General Thoracic Surgery Residency Program for over 10 years. She has won awards for teaching at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level.

After completing her medical training at the University of Western Ontario in 1981, Dr. Darling obtained her fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in General Surgery in 1986. She then completed two years of basic science research at the National Cancer Institute in the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Following this, she completed a fellowship in Thoracic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic and obtained certification in Thoracic Surgery from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1990.

After returning to Canada, Dr. Darling started her practice in Thoracic Surgery and Critical Care at the Wellesley Hospital in Toronto, moved to the Thoracic Surgery division at Mount Sinai Hospital and then in 1998 joined DOTS.

Dr. Darling has focused her practice in Thoracic Surgical oncology. Her primary clinical interests are lung and esophageal cancer but include other malignancies of the mediastinum and thorax. Her interest in the esophagus also extends to benign esophageal disease. She has been active in clinical trials in oncology and has been a principal investigator for the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group and the Ontario Cancer Research Network, as well as a site Principal Investigator for the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group. She has been a member of Cancer Care Ontario Program in Evidence Based Care Lung Disease site and recently has joined the PEBC Report Approval Panel. Dr Darling has also been an active participant in the CCO Surgical Oncology Thoracic Community of Practice having coauthored a guideline on invasive mediastinal staging and developed quality indicators for thoracic surgery. She is also a member of the Worldwide Esophageal Cancer Collaboration and is an associate editor for the journal Diseases of the Esophagus. She became Chair of the Nucleus Committee for the specialty of Thoracic Surgery in July 2012. She is the Thoracic Surgery lead for the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group, a very important international clinical trials organization. She is also a member of the Lung Site Executive Committee for the National Cancer Insititute of Canada – Clinical Trials Group

Gail Darling MD FRCSC FACS

Kress Family Chair in Esophageal Cancer
Thoracic Surgeon, Division of Thoracic Surgery
Director, Thoracic Surgery Clinical Research
Director, Esophageal Function Laboratory,
University Health Network
Professor, Division of Thoracic Surgery
University of Toronto