Waddah B. Al-Refaie, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Waddah B. Al-Refaie, MD, FACS, serves MedStar Health and Georgetown University as the founding Regional Chief of Surgical Oncology, John S. Dillon Chair in Surgical Oncology and Surgeon in Chief of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. His clinical areas of interests are in GI oncology, namely cancers of the stomach, soft tissue sarcomas and melanomas. He is one of the busiest gastric cancer and sarcoma surgeons in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia metro area. 

In his role at MedStar Health and Georgetown University, Dr. Al-Refaie oversees the operation, research, outreach, and education of the surgical oncology service line across the MedStar Washington Region, namely across MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and MedStar Washington Hospital Center. In his leadership role as the Vice-Chair for Research, he oversees the all of the research endeavors, protocols, and research enhancing activities conducted by the faculty, residents and students within MedStar Washington Regional Surgical Services. Inspired by his previous leadership experience in Minnesota, he created and now leads the MedStar-Georgetown Surgical Outcomes Research Center (MG-SORC). The mission of MG-SORC is to ameliorate the burden of surgical disease through effective care and research informed by the priorities of stakeholders of health. MG-SORC focusses on these three important research areas in surgery: 1) quality, 2) impact of health policy on access to and quality of surgery, 3) mitigating surgical disparities especially among vulnerable populations. 

Al-Refaie is a fellowship trained surgical oncologist. He obtained his medical degree from The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. After a finishing an internship at The Amiri Hospital in Kuwait, he completed his residency at the University of California San Diego. He then completed a fellowship at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Prior to Georgetown, Dr. Al-Refaie served as the Co-director of the University of Minnesota Surgical Outcomes Research Center where he co-led a group of research analysts and mentored several surgical residents. 

He has over 90 peer-reviewed manuscripts uncovering various aspects of variations and disparities in surgical care. He has mentored several surgeons, residents and students in surgical oncology, outcomes research and education. He leads the annual MedStar Georgetown Gastric and Soft Tissue Neoplasms Symposiums. He also started and lead the MedStar Surgical Oncology journal club. Waddah is a member of several prestigious surgical and cancer societies including The American College of Surgeons, Society of University Surgeons, Surgical Biology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, The Southern Surgical Association and The American Surgical Association just to name a few.