New faculty spotlight: Daphne Ly, MD

Daphne Ly, MD, is a new faculty member at UNMC.

• Name: Daphne Ly, MD
• Hometown: Palo Alto, California
• Title at UNMC and Nebraska Medicine: Associate professor, UNMC Department of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology; surgical oncologist, Nebraska Medicine

Education:

• MD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York
• Residency, general surgery, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey
• Fellowship, surgical critical care, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California
• Fellowship, breast surgical oncology, UCSF School of Medicine, San Francisco 

Professional and medical interests

• Breast and cutaneous surgical oncology
• Cancer genetics and data sciences

Research and scholarly interests:

• Integrate machine learning with an electronic health record system to improve workflow and achieve individualized cancer care based on current evidence
• Apply cancer genetics and data sciences in cancer treatment, prevention, risk reduction and early detection
• DCIS risk stratification and treatment

How did you fall in love with surgical oncology? I am an engineer at heart. I love being able to understand how things work and fix or improve them. A career in surgery, especially cancer surgery, allows me to not only use my skills and knowledge to fix the problem. I am able to improve the patient's quality of life and/or survival. Being a breast cancer surgeon, I am able to do a few things that are unique to breast cancer treatment. There have been significant improvements in all aspects of breast cancer treatment over the past few decades. Women survive for a long-time post-cancer treatment. Therefore, it is no longer enough to just remove cancer and leave the women to live with the deformity for a few decades of their life. The challenge is to perform an oncologically safe procedure but also leave the breast with a cosmetically pleasing appearance. Therefore, a breast surgeon has the opportunity to remove cancer and restore the breasts to at least the same or better form than before surgery. In addition, the current in-depth knowledge of breast cancer enables us to individualize the therapy so each patient can receive the amount needed and reduce toxicity and side effects from the therapies. Last but not least is the availability of various tools and imaging modalities to allow us to assess the patient’s risk and devise a plan to reduce and/or prevent breast/ovarian cancer from occurring.

My goal is to focus my effort on developing ways to individualize cancer treatment, cancer prevention, risk reduction, and early detection. I look forward to being able to collaborate with basic science researchers at UNMC and integrate my skill and knowledge in data science, cancer genetic and breast surgical oncology to develop a high-risk clinic with longitudinal follow-up to achieve this goal.

Memberships: 

• American Society of Breast Surgeons
• American Society of Clinical Oncology 
• ACS National Ultrasound Faculty 
• American College of Surgeons 
• Association for Academic Surgery 
• Association of Women Surgeons 
• Society of Critical Care Medicine 

Three things people don’t know about me:

• I have three crazy but adorable miniature poodles. I groom them by myself and do agility training with them.
• I was born in Vietnam, came to the United States as a refugee, grew up and obtained most of my education here.
• I was a software engineer for seven years prior to starting medical school.

Locations: Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center and Cancer Center at Village Pointe Health Center

Appointments and referrals: 402-559-5600