William Robert Lynch, MD

William R. Lynch, M.D., is the Associate Professor of Surgery for the Section of Thoracic Surgery in the clinical track in the Department of Surgery, Section of Thoracic Surgery. He will also provide services at the Ann Arbor Veterans Administration Hospital and have a dry appointment in the College of Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Principal responsibilities include clinical care, teaching, clinical research and program development, particularly implementation of ex vivo lung perfusion and other means of advanced donor organ management into our pulmonary transplantation program. Dr. Lynch will be mentored with Dr. Robert Bartlett. Primary research responsibilities are conducting independent scholarly investigations in the ECMO and critical care. Dr. Lynch has served as Chairman-Elect for the ELSO Steering Committee since 2010, and has had eight publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Lynch received his Medical Degree (1994) from the University of Michigan, and completed his General Surgery residency (2000) at Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania. He completed his Thoracic Surgery residency at the University of Michigan in 2003. He was a Fellow in Extracorporeal Life Support (1998) and in Surgical Critical Care (1999) at the University of Michigan and more recently had a Fellowship in Lung Transplantation (2011) with the Toronto Lung Transplant Group, Toronto, Ontario.

Clinical Specialization:

Dr. Lynch specializes in all aspects of general thoracic surgery including pulmonary transplantation and thoracic oncology.

General thoracic surgery, pulmonary transplantation and thoracic oncology.

University of Michigan Health participates with most health insurance plans.

Dr. Lynch's research interests are in the areas of acute and chronic lung failure and surgical education. He has been interested in advancing extracorporeal life support (ECLS) as a strategy in acute lung failure. The focus of these clinical efforts has been using ECLS facilitate mobility of these acutely ill patients. As part of this interest, he has worked on developing an artificial lung and intends to continue this work at the University of Michigan. Lung transplantation is a strategy for chronic end-stage lung failure. Dr. Lynch spent a developmental leave with the Toronto Lung Transplant Group to learn clinical application of ex-vivo lung perfusion as a novel strategy to expand the donor pool. This work will be established at Michigan as a collaborative, multidisciplinary effort with the Lung Transplant group and Gift of Life, Michigan.

Dr. Lynch is also developing techniques of simulating lung resections for thoracic resident education. He has developed a simulation-based curriculum for ECLS education of medical students, nurses, ECMO Specialists and physicians. This course has been offered bi-annually and was instrumental in helping new ECMO programs become established in Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Champaign-Urbana and South Africa. This will continue in Ann Arbor as part of the Michigan Course.