Davood Vafai, MD

Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology, Dr. Vafai is a graduate of the Tehran Medical School in Iran. After medical school, Dr. Vafai completed his internship at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey, and a residency and oncology fellowship at the University of Southern California. He completed another fellowship in hematology and bone marrow transplantation at the University of California, San Diego.

“My father had cancer, as did other family members,” says Davood Vafai, MD, a Board Certified Medical Oncologist with Eisenhower Hematology/Oncologist Specialists. “I saw what this disease does and how it progresses, so I decided to pursue oncology as a career. It became a personal and professional challenge.”

In his current practice, Dr. Vafai sees a broad range of hematology and oncology patients; his professional interests focus on lung cancer and blood cancers such as lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma. “One of the reasons for my fellowship in bone marrow transplantation is that these types of patients need a great deal of care, and I wanted to be involved,” explains Dr. Vafai.

He is the author of several publications and book chapters in addition to being Sub-investigator or pincipal Investigator for 120 oncologic treatment protocols and new drug investigations. He is an active participant on the Eisenhower Medical Center Tumor Board, and runs the Hematology/Oncology Journal Club on campus. He loves teaching and is passionate about the advances in oncology that have extended quality months of life in patients living with malignancies.

As the engineer of the lung cancer chemotherapy regimen Carboplatin and Taxol, Dr. Vafai presented this treatment at the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 1995. Since then, the Carboplatin and Taxol treatment has been a standard in lung cancer treatment in United States and across the globe. It is now being used in the treatment of many other cancers.

Additionally, Dr. Vafai is the principal investigator of the International Early Lung Cancer Action Project (I-ELCAP) at Eisenhower Medical Center which he has led for more than a decade. This modality of detection and treatment was just recently approved by United States Task Force, and is now considered a standard of treatment in the United States.

Dr. Vafai marvels at the tremendous advances in cancer treatment that have developed in years since he’s been in practice. “Oncology is probably the most complex and fastest-growing field in medicine,” he comments. “It gives patients and doctors a lot of hope.”