My name is Sasha Krupnick and I'm a thoracic surgeon here at the University of Virginia. I specialize in several things, with my focus being lung transplantation and lung cancer. But I also operate on cancers of the esophagus as well as benign, for ... I've got people with reflux, people with hiatal hernias. 

I've always been attracted to surgery and medicine specifically, because you have an ability to make an impact in people's lives. Thoracic surgery's very exciting because you get to deal with several types of conditions. You get to deal with people with cancer, you deal with end-stage organ failure and participate in that, so I found it an exciting field and a rapidly developing field where I could make some contributions and help my patients. 

New patients can expect the office staff to be warm and friendly, and they are. We're surrounded by wonderful people who are very excited about their jobs and at the same time are very caring. That provides a level of comfort to people who have a newly diagnosed cancer, or a potentially life-threatening problem. That's something we're very proud of. Our staff that takes care of the patient and facilitates the process. 

Passionate about development of new therapy, passionate about minimally invasive therapy and a way to solve the patient's problem and gt them out of the hospital a little bit quicker. Those are the things that I find the most exciting.