Laila Gharzai, MD
Assistant Professor, Radiology
Research Program
Cancer-Focused Research
Dr. Laila Gharzai is a radiation oncologist and investigator. Her academic goal is to advance cancer care while minimizing both short- and long-term side effects from treatment, spanning from physical effects to socioeconomic impacts including financial toxicity. Her scholarly work has included quantifying toxicities after treatment, such as difficulty swallowing after head and neck cancer treatment, and incorporating imaging to predict for risk of toxicity. She has utilized qualitative and survey-based methods to bring patient voices into her research, including by interviewing patients to identify strategies to decrease financial toxicity and assessing patient interest in optimizing post-treatment surveillance through the use of patient-reported outcomes. Her clinical interests lie in head and neck cancer and lung cancer.