Prior to joining the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the Toronto General Hospital, Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa completed her Internal Medicine, Respirology and Interventional Thoracic Surgery training at the University of Toronto and obtained her Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa’s clinical practice focuses on minimally-invasive diagnosis of thoracic disease including primary and metastatic lung and other cancers using cutting-edge technologies of Endobronchial Ultrasound- guided Transbronchial Needle Aspiration (EBUS-TBNA), radial probe EBUS, narrow band imaging, autofluorescence and navigational bronchoscopy. Through the unique training that combined Respirology and Interventional Thoracic Surgery, Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa has been an important addition to the Lung Rapid Assessment and Management Program (LungRAMP) at the Toronto General Hospital, assisting patients in their cancer journey at all stages of the disease from the diagnosis, through the pre-treatment assessment, and palliation of primary and recurrent lung cancer. As a chairman of the multidisciplinary LungRAMP triage rounds, Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa oversees an important quality metric of the Program – the timely access to cancer care by streamlining the diagnostic process and assisting in access to clinical trial participation.

Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa is the clinical director of the multidisciplinary Rapid Assessment of Complex Pleural Effusion (RACE) Program at the Toronto General Hospital, a program focused on timely evaluation and definitive management of malignant pleural effusion and diagnostic assessment of undiagnosed exudates with the goal of reducing malignant pleural effusion-related hospital admissions and improving patient’s quality of life.

Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa is a clinician Investigator at the University of Toronto. Her research interests are centered around two major topics: 1) health technology assessment with specific focus on population with malignant and benign disease of the thorax, evaluating the relationships between evidence based medicine and decision modeling and use of administrative data to develop longitudinal costing models; 2) assessment of health-related quality of life in patients with malignant diseases of the thorax.
Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa is collaborating closely with the clinical investigators within the Division of Thoracic Surgery and The Toronto Health Economic and Technology Assessment Collaborative (THETA) focusing on projects related to translational research in lung cancer and expanding evaluation of new technologies and programs and evaluating their clinical and economic impact by performing their cost-effectiveness assessments and developing longitudinal cost models using local costing data.

Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa has participated in clinical practice guideline development through the Cancer Care Ontario (CCO). She has offered her expertise and contributed to the development of the lung cancer entry and transfer of care criteria, the lung cancer diagnostic pathway and pulmonary nodule assessment and follow up through her participation in the diagnostic assessment program and solitary pulmonary nodule working groups within the CCO.

Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa is actively involved in Interventional Pulmonology training at the University of Toronto as one of the clinicians within the Interventional Thoracic Surgery training program. She participates in education of Thoracic Surgery and Respirology trainees and other specialty trainees in topics related to Interventional Pulmonology through didactic sessions within structured courses and simulation training at a local and international level (i.e. American Association of Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology annual postgraduate courses, American College of Chest Physicians, American Thoracic Society, University of Toronto EBUS-TBNA and radial probe EBUS training courses, University of Toronto Thoracic Boot Camp, Toronto Thoracic Refresher Course, University of Toronto Thoracic Surgery and Respiratory Academic half day).

Dr. Czarnecka-Kujawa is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology.