Elizabeth B. Claus, MD, PhD
 |
Elizabeth Claus, MD,
PhD, Brigham and
Women's Hospital,
Yale University |
Associate Surgeon, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Claus is an associate professor of Epidemiology at Yale University and a biostatistician of the Epidemiology of Cancer NIH study.
Medical Education:
- Yale University School of Medicine, 1994
Internship:
- Yale-New Haven Hospital, General Surgery, 1996
Fellowship:
- Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Neurosurgical Oncology, 2003
Clinical Interests:
Brain tumors, epidemiology of brain tumors, meningioma, glioma, metastatic brain tumors, metastatic breast cancer.
Dr. Claus’s research interests include the epidemiology of brain tumors as well as the study of outcomes for neurosurgical patients. Over the past year, she has examined whether the extent of surgical resection is an important predictive factor of long-term outcomes among patients diagnosed with low-grade gliomas undergoing surgical resection in the intra-operative MRI suite at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The one-, two-, and five-year death rates for this group of patients (1.9%, 3.6% and 17.6%), respectively, were significantly lower than those reported using national databases, suggesting that the extent of resection is a predictive factor of long-term outcomes for patients.
Dr. Claus is also involved in a multi-dimensional effort to determine the epidemiology of meningioma. Dr. Claus is working to formally and comprehensively examine the environmental, genetic, pathologic and clinical variables associated with meningioma risk for the first time in a large epidemiological study. The study will collect data from five population-based study sites in the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and North Carolina as well as the San Francisco Bay Area and Harris County, Texas. The timing of such a study is advantageous given recent brain tumor registry legislation passed in the United States that requires doctors to report benign tumors as well as malignant tumors to the federal government.
Some of the questions that will be asked include: Are hormones associated with an increased risk in the development of meningioma? Is ionizing radiation associated with an increased risk of meningioma? And what is the quality of life for patients diagnosed with meningioma? Preliminary studies on this topic are in progress at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital with funding from the Brain Science Foundation and Meningioma Mommas, a Colorado-based support group for those diagnosed with meningiomas and their families and friends.
Studies and Publications: