Dr. Andrea Hayes-Dixon

Dr. Andrea Hayes Dixon is a professor of pediatric surgery and surgical oncology at the University of North Carolina Children’s Hospital. She is the Surgeon-in-Chief of the UNC Children’s hospital and the Division Chief of Pediatric Surgery at UNC. Dr. Hayes-Dixon has a basic science laboratory, which focuses on rare sarcomas and maintains clinical research efforts. She specializes in refractory and resistant tumors and children and specifically soft tissue sarcomas and children. Her patient’s request her services from around the world because of the rare diseases she investigates. She was previously the Section Chief of Pediatric Surgery at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. 

She developed the first orthotropic xenograft model of metastatic Ewing’s sarcoma. She simultaneously conducted clinical research and completed the first cytoreductive surgery and hyper-thermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy HIPEC, for children with sarcomatosis. She completed a phase I and II trial and established the safe dose of chemotherapy to be delivered in HIPEC. She is nationally and internationally known for her work pioneering HIPEC for children. 

She has continued to influence the field of sarcoma and sarcomatosis by amassing the largest number of desmoplastic small round cell tumor DSRCT, patients at any one hospital and by any one surgeon. DSRCT is a rare disease for which she has improved a survival from 30% to 60% based on complete removal of 100s of intra-abdominal tumor implants and HIPEC. She continues to receive philanthropic funding for her unique research. 

Dr. Hayes-Dixon has served on the executive committee of the children’s oncology group sarcoma community for the past 10 years this position is shared by only 2 other pediatric surgeons in the country. She has earned membership into the American Surgical Association and has served as chair of the cancer committee for the American Pediatric Surgical Association. She has also been selected to the pediatric disease query PDQ, a national committee that vets every publication on pediatric cancer and summarizes it on the national Institute of health website. She is the current President of The Society of Black Academic Surgeons and is a Governor of the American College of Surgeons. Additionally, she was appointed by President Trump to the National Cancer Advisory Board.