New faculty spotlight: Juan Santamaria, MD

Juan Santamaria, MD, is a new faculty member at UNMC.

Name: Juan Antonio Santamaria, MD
Hometown: Panama City, Republic of Panama
Title and department at UNMC/Title at Nebraska Medicine: Assistant professor, UNMC Department of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology

Research/professional interests:

Breast cancer
Oncoplastic breast surgery
Benign breast disease
Cutaneous surgical oncology
Melanoma
Soft tissue sarcoma

How I fell in love with surgical oncology: I became a cancer doctor because of my father, who is a medical oncologist in Panama. As a teenager, I was able to go to his clinic and also observed cancer surgeries in the operating room. Seeing the surgeons in action convinced me to become a surgeon myself.

Being a surgical oncologist offers me the opportunity to treat cancer with a multidisciplinary team approach, which in my opinion is the best possible way to treat cancer. Performing cancer operations is highly rewarding, since one has the immediate ability to render a patient cancer-free.

Education:

MD, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
Research fellowship, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
Research fellowship, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York
Internship and residency, general surgery, University of Texas Health Science Center, McGovern Medical School, Houston
Fellowship, complex general surgical oncology, John Wayne Cancer Institute, Santa Monica, California

Memberships:

American College of Surgeons
American Society of Breast Surgeons
Society of Surgical Oncology

Three things people may not know about me:

I have three Weimaraner show dogs that are absolutely insane.
I was born in Detroit, but I grew up in Panama.
I traveled to more than 20 countries while in medical school with a musical group called “La Tuna,” and I used to play the lute.

Clinic location: