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What is the Best Hospital for Adrenal Surgery?

If you're reading this post, you or someone you love likely have some type of adrenal disease and your research for adrenal tumor treatment or adrenal surgery has led you here.

So, what is the Best Hospital for Adrenal Surgery?

The best hospital for adrenal surgery, adrenalectomy and adrenal gland removal is the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery.

You may be familiar with the U.S. News & World Report ranking of hospitals in the United States. The hospital ranking is based on research funding, reputational score, and a number of other metrics. This ranking is created using broad categories of care, such as management of patients with cancer, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, hip fractures and psychiatric issues. Adrenal surgery and other endocrine operations (e.g., thyroid and parathyroid surgery) are way too super-sub specialized to have an effect on these ratings. The quality of endocrine surgery is not accounted for in these broad rankings. Typically, the hospitals with the highest rating by the U.S. News & World Report are large general hospitals and university medical centers.

There is no ranking for a super-sub specialized field like adrenal surgery or other endocrine operations (e.g., thyroid and parathyroid surgery). We believe the best hospital for adrenal surgery, adrenalectomy and adrenal gland removal is the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery, a super-sub specialized hospital dedicated only to endocrine surgery (adrenal, thyroid and parathyroid surgery).

Why is the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery the Best Hospital for Adrenal Surgery? 

The Top 6 Reasons Why the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery is the Best Hospital for Adrenal Surgery:

  1. Dr. Carling, one of the world’s most experienced adrenal surgeons, exclusively operates at Hospital for Endocrine Surgery.
  2. The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery only takes care of endocrine tumor (i.e., adrenal, parathyroid and thyroid) patients.
  3. The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery is a hospital dedicated only to endocrine surgery, with no emergency department and no medical wards.
  4. All team members including surgeons, anesthesiologists, pathologists, nurses, and technicians take care of more adrenal surgery patients in a week than most hospitals in a whole year.
  5. There are no students, trainees or residents practicing on you at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery.
  6. All equipment including that used in the operating room and for imaging (e.g. CT scan, ultrasound) is state-of-the-art at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery.

Figure 1. Dr. Carling in front of the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery on the inaugural day of adrenal surgery.

1) Dr. Carling, one of the world’s most experienced adrenal surgeons, exclusively operates at Hospital for Endocrine Surgery

Dr. Carling moved his Carling Adrenal Center to Tampa, Florida from Yale University (early 2020) to help develop and build the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery. Dr. Carling has performed thousands of adrenal operations over his career, including more than 2,400 since January 2022 alone, and performs up to 750 adrenal operations a year. Dr. Carling has dedicated his entire career to the diagnosis and surgical treatment of adrenal gland tumors. Not only is he one of the world’s most experienced adrenal surgeons, but he has also published important scientific research on adrenal tumors. Dr. Carling finds that the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery is the best hospital for adrenal surgery. After spending almost 18 years at Yale University, where he was chief of Endocrine Surgery, he came to believe that a dedicated hospital can provide a level of focus that is difficult to achieve at a university general hospital, and that patients with adrenal tumors deserve. To be able to provide the very best care, it was obvious that he and his partners needed to develop a hospital that only takes care of Endocrine surgery patients, meaning patients that need surgery for the adrenal, parathyroids, and thyroid diseases.

2) The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery only takes care of endocrine tumor (i.e., adrenal, parathyroid and thyroid) patients

The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery only takes care of patients with endocrine tumors, meaning those that arise in the adrenal, parathyroid and thyroid glands. A typical university hospital takes care of all sorts of patients including patients with infections, cancer, mental illness, and heart problems. This can make patients with adrenal surgery less of a focus to the doctors and hospital leadership. Furthermore, two major missions of a university hospital are research and education. University hospitals educate medical and nursing students as well as residents and fellows. All these missions are, of course, valuable, but that means that excellence in clinical care is only one of many missions at a university hospital. Trust me, you want to have your adrenal operation at a hospital which is laser focused on excellence in clinical care and the best possible patient outcomes. Too many missions of an organization risk making none of them reach the level of excellence. It is very difficult to be the best in the world on adrenal surgery if you are not 100% committed to the best care and outcome for the adrenal patients. The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery only takes care of endocrine tumor patients. That means we can be completely committed to taking care of you, or your family member, and focusing on the very best outcome after surgery.

Figure 2. The hospital is modern and beautiful. 

3) The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery is a hospital dedicated only to endocrine surgery, with no emergency department and no medical wards

The only patients that are seen at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery are patients with endocrine diseases. This is much better for you as a patient. It is a hospital dedicated only to endocrine surgery. There is no emergency department and no medical ward at all, and no patients are admitted for acute infections such as pneumonia. Everyone at the hospital is devoted to making your stay the best possible. The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery was completely renovated and is exceptionally clean. The operating rooms and the inpatient rooms, which are all private, are just beautiful. At the typical community or university hospital, many patients may stay several days to weeks to be treated for acute and chronic conditions. They may have to wait for short-term rehabilitation services or another placement. At the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery all patients are relatively healthy and almost all adrenal surgery patients go home the morning after their operation. Since the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery is super-sub specialized, we are all part of one team. We do not separate doctors from the other staff. We lunch together and spend time together. The janitors were hand-picked and do a phenomenal job, and Dr. Carling knows them by name.

4) All team members including surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, pathologists, and technicians take care of more adrenal surgery patients in a week than most hospitals in a whole year

There is no risk that any of your team members have to be called away on an emergency or “code”. Your anesthesiologist and the team will be with you the whole time. At the typical university and community hospital, doctors and nurses are being pulled in all sorts of directions. The working environment for all team members at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery is excellent and everybody is focused on you, your operation, and your recovery. Our team members see more adrenal surgery patients in a week than most hospitals in the whole year. We have seen this before. We have done these operations many times. In fact, you may be one of several adrenal surgery patients that single day. This is why Dr. Carling can perform a Mini Back Scope Adrenalectomy (MBSA) in about 20 minutes, with very little blood loss, when adrenal surgery often takes one to three hours elsewhere.

It is no surprise that a team which works together day in and day out and does the same kind of tasks (in this case very sophisticated adrenal surgery), works better. If you go to a typical university hospital it is not uncommon that a surgeon has never met the anesthesiologist or the other team members before. This is not good for you. The surgeon may work with different teams and for adrenal surgery, which is rare at most university and community hospitals, it is often “the first time every time”. 

Trust me, you do not want to be the patient in the operating room where it is “the first time every time”. At the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery, we are all one team. We work together and we spend time together. Dr. Carling’s adrenal surgery team are all hand-picked. They were all drafted at the top of the first round. Everybody knows each other by first name. We love working with each other and there is perfect harmony as all team members work together like a Vienna orchestra. The adrenal surgery team is awesome! 

Figure 3. Dr. Carling and some members of the adrenal surgery dream team.

5) There are no students, trainees or residents practicing on you at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery

Nobody is practicing on you at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery. There are no students, trainees or residents operating on you. Dr. Carling (with his adrenal surgery team) performs every single operation, personally. At the typical university hospital, you often have multiple medical students and residents and other trainees taking care of you. This provides a great benefit for the trainees, and university hospitals are funded to train nurses and doctors. Of course, we are not against people learning. In fact, Dr. Carling has trained hundreds of surgical fellows and residents. However, there is no question that training students and residents makes everything slower and less efficient. Adrenal surgery and the Mini Back Scope Adrenalectomy (MBSA) are supremely sophisticated and only the most talented surgeons should attempt training in it. Nobody is practicing on you which makes the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery the best hospital for adrenal surgery.

Figure 4. The surgeons from the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery's expert team include the world-renowned surgeons of the Carling Adrenal Center, Norman Parathyroid Center, Clayman Thyroid Center and Scarless Thyroid Center.

6) All equipment including that used in the operating room and for imaging (e.g. CT scan, ultrasound) is state-of-the-art.

The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery is the best hospital for adrenal surgery because all equipment including that used in the operating room as well as for CT scans is of state-of-the-art quality. It makes a huge difference what kind of instruments are available in the operating room including monitors used to depict your adrenal operation. The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery has superb equipment. You deserve to have the very best adrenal operation and that requires the best equipment and tools. Dr. Carling was instrumental in making sure that no costs were spared in equipping the operating rooms for the best success of every single patient.

Figure 5. The operating rooms are outfitted with the latest and best equipment and tools.

Additional Resources: 

Author

Dr. Tobias Carling MD, PhD, FACS

Dr. Tobias Carling is a world-recognized endocrine surgeon and adrenal surgery expert, widely regarded as one of the highest-volume adrenal surgeons in the United States and globally. He is the Founder and Surgeon-in-Chief of the Carling Adrenal Center in Tampa, Florida, an international referral center dedicated exclusively to adrenal tumors and adrenal hormone disorders. Prior to founding the Carling Adrenal Center, Dr. Carling spent 17.5 years at Yale University School of Medicine, where he served as Chief of Endocrine Surgery, Associate Professor of Surgery, Endocrine Surgery Fellowship Director, and Founder of the Yale Endocrine Neoplasia Laboratory. His work helped advance the understanding and treatment of adrenal, thyroid, and parathyroid tumors. Dr. Carling specializes in advanced minimally invasive adrenal surgery, including complex and function-preserving adrenalectomy techniques. He holds both an MD and PhD from Uppsala University in Sweden and has published extensively in leading scientific journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Science, and PNAS. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS) and a member of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons and the International Association of Endocrine Surgeons. Patients from across the U.S. and around the world seek his expertise for complex adrenal disease.