Dr. Eric Toloza

Dr. Toloza, born in the Philippines and raised in southern California, received his undergraduate degree in 1984 at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also received both his medical degree and a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1991. He completed his internship and residency in General Surgery at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center in 1998, during which time he also completed a Surgical Oncology Research Fellowship at UCLA, where he performed gene therapy research for melanoma and sarcoma. He completed his Cardiothoracic Surgery residency in 2000 at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, TX, where he also completed a concurrent Thoracic Surgical Oncology Fellowship at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

A Diplomat of the American Board of Surgery, and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, Dr. Toloza began his practice in 2000 as a Cardiothoracic Surgeon at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, where he was an Assistant Professor of Surgery.

In 2010, Dr. Toloza came to the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL, where he practices full-time as a Thoracic Oncologist and is now a Senior Member in the multidisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Program. He also has concurrent appointments as Professor of Surgery and Professor of Oncologic Sciences in the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine in Tampa.

Dr. Toloza is involved in several lung cancer clinical research programs and has authored or co-authored numerous medical journal articles, book chapters and books. He is involved in the evaluation and aggressive combined-modality treatment of all stages of lung cancer, as well as in the evaluation and treatment of mediastinal and chest wall masses and also pulmonary metastases from a variety of other non-thoracic primary malignancies. He is also one of only a few thoracic surgeons worldwide who is certified to perform robotic-assisted thoracic surgery for primary lung cancer, pulmonary metastases, and mediastinal masses. Dr. Toloza is also certified to perform navigational bronchoscopy in order to diagnose lung nodules minimally invasively and lung cancers at early stages.