Colon & Rectal Surgery of North Jersey

Diana Fibison, MD is an American Board of Family Medicine Certified physician, who her patients recognize as a caring, thorough, and talented family physician. Dr. Fibison first completed her medical degree at the University of Victor Babes Medical School in Romania...

B. Payne Stanifer, MD, MPH has been with the Department of Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center since 2017. He completed his fellowship as the chief fellow in thoracic surgery at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL where he trained under Dr. Malcolm DeCamp and Dr. Patrick McCarthy in thoracic and cardiac surgery. His clinical interests encompass all areas of thoracic surgery including lung and esophageal cancer, thymic tumors, tracheal resection and reconstruction, and surgery for tracheomalacia (tracheoplasty), chest wall, diaphragm, benign esophageal disease, surgery for emphysema, and lung transplant. He has skills in both minimally invasive and complex open surgery of the chest and the abdomen. Dr. Stanifer has a special interest in complex VATS pulmonary surgery including lobectomy and segmentectomy. He prefers minimally invasive techniques such as laparoscopy and VATS for the esophagus whenever possible but performs all forms of esophagectomies based on the patient’s needs. Dr. Stanifer has authored numerous presentations, abstracts, and publications on topics in thoracic surgery such as lung cancer, tracheal surgery, spontaneous pneumothorax, and interstitial lung disease. His research at Columbia has focused on oncology with particular interests in clinical trials, outcomes, and the epidemiology and mechanisms of lung cancer in non-smokers, especially women. He is one of the founders and directors of the Women’s Lung Center within the Price Family Center for Comprehensive Chest Care. This multidisciplinary center focuses on unique issues facing women including lung cancer in non-smokers and metastatic cancers. Dr. Stanifer completed his general surgery residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire. He is Board-certified in general surgery. While at Dartmouth, he obtained a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard with a focus on management and health policy. During his time at Harvard he was a Carson Family Scholar. He graduated medical school from the James H. Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University where he was a Quillen Medical Scholar. While a student at Quillen, he completed a research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary where he focused on molecular and evolutionary biology. His research won a Howard Hughes Student Research grant. He has extensive volunteer experience in underserved areas and was an intern for the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at (212) 305-3408.

Joshua R. Sonett MD FACS is the Edward C. and Anne K. Weiskopf Professor of Surgical Oncology (in Surgery) at CUMC, Chief of General Thoracic Surgery and Director, The Price Family Center for Comprehensive Chest Care, Lung and Esophageal Center. He is instrumental in making the Thoracic Surgery section at Columbia University Medical Center one of the best in the U.S. and he is one of the youngest professors of surgery at a major academic institution in the United States. Dr. Sonett is best known for his work on the multidisciplinary treatment of lung and esophageal malignancies. Leading work in minimally invasive treatment of lung and esophageal cancer, Dr. Sonett and his team at Columbia are innovators in the development and teaching techniques of Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) and Minimally Invasive Esophageal (MIE) surgery, allowing surgeons to incorporate these techniques into their daily practices. Dr. Sonett and his team make up one of the few programs in the country to employ a combination of maximal chemo and radiation and surgical therapies in the treatment of locally advanced lung malignancies. He is also a leader in multi-modality therapies for lung and esophageal cancers, and a pioneer in endo-bronchial palliation of benign and malignant airway stenosis. In the clinical area of lung transplantation, Dr. Sonett is best known for developing an extended-donor lung transplant criteria protocol. Extended donor criteria (EDC) applies to the use of organs that don't meet the usual criteria for transplantation due to various health problems, but are still healthy enough for a successful transplant (Liver MD 2006). Dr. Sonett and his team have been aggressively trying to alleviate the donor shortage by evaluating lungs that may be rejected from other centers (CS News 2005). Between 2001 and 2003, 53 percent of the lungs transplanted at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia were extended donor criteria lungs, with no difference in survival between EDC lung recipients and regular lung recipients. The Columbia programs has a 95% survival rate after one year and 83% after three years, which far surpasses the national average of 79% and 62% respectively (CS Lung News 2006). Dr. Sonett has been an invited speaker and principal and co- investigator of numerous clinical trials, author of numerous publications in renown journals such as the Journal of The American College of Cardiology, Annals of Thoracic Surgery, and the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplant, among many others. Dr. Sonett received his MD from Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University Medical School, and completed his surgical residency at the University of Massachusetts, and Thoracic Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Professional Memberships include the New York Thoracic Society, The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgeons Dr. Sonett has received numerous award and honors including annual awards to America's Top Doctors, Castle Connolly America's Top Doctors for Cancer, New York Magazine's Best Doctors, the Barbara Neibauer Celebration of Life Award, Foundation for Thymic Cancer and the Humanitarian Award, Chesed of New Square.