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Lynn Tanoue, MD, MBA

Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary)
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Additional Titles

Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs, Internal Medicine

Director, Lung Cancer Screening Program

About

Titles

Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary)

Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs, Internal Medicine; Director, Lung Cancer Screening Program

Biography

Lynn Tanoue, MD, MBA is Professor in the Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, and Vice-Chair for Clinical Affairs in the Department of Internal Medicine. Dr. Tanoue received her undergraduate degree from Harvard and medical degree from Yale. She completed internal medicine residency, chief residency, and fellowship in pulmonary/critical care medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital. Her clinical interests focus on thoracic oncology and lung cancer screening. She is a founding member of the multidisciplinary Yale Cancer Center Thoracic Oncology Program and Director of the Yale Lung Screening and Nodule Program. She established the Yale New Haven Hospital Tuberculosis Outreach Program, which over the past twenty years has performed tuberculosis screening in thousands of English-as-a-Second-Language students enrolled at the New Haven Center for Adult Education. She has had numerous leadership roles at Yale New Haven Hospital, including as past president of the medical staff. Dr. Tanoue serves on numerous national committees; she is a member of the Board of Regents of the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST), member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network lung cancer screening guidelines committee, past chair of the American Thoracic Society Thoracic Oncology Assembly, and current chair of the Pulmonary Medicine Board of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Learn more about Dr. Tanoue>>

Dr. Tanoue is an active clinician, mentor, and educator at Yale, where she has received a number of awards including the Leffell Prize for Clinical Excellence, the Department of Internal Medicine Faculty Achievement Award for Clinical Care, the Dean’s Mentors Award, and the Leah Lowenstein Award. Her contributions to Yale School of Medicine include the founding of the Yale Medical Symphony Orchestra, of which she is a member and President of its Board of Directors.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

MBA
Yale University (2019)
Fellow
Yale University School of Medicine (1988)
Chief Resident
Yale New Haven Hospital (1986)
Resident
Yale New Haven Hospital (1985)
MD
Yale University (1982)
BA
Harvard-Radcliffe College (1978)

Research

Overview

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Lung Neoplasms; Pulmonary Medicine; Respiration; Thoracic Neoplasms

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Lynn Tanoue's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

Clinical Trials

Current Trials

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • activity

    American Board of Internal Medicine

  • activity

    National Comprehensive Cancer Network

  • honor

    Lifetime Achievement Award

  • honor

    Connecticut Magazine Top Docs 2017

  • honor

    Connecticut Magazine Top Docs 2018

Clinical Care

Overview

Lynn Tanoue, MD, MBA, is a pulmonary critical care specialist who predominantly treats patients with lung cancer. At Yale New Haven Hospital, she consults on patients with pulmonary diseases, and works as a critical care specialist in the Intensive Care Unit.

Dr. Tanoue says her most rewarding moments are always with patients, though she is also a researcher and a leader in improving care overall for people with lung disease. She has been focusing on lung cancer for the past 15 years.

Dr. Tanoue founded the Yale Cancer Center Thoracic Oncology Program (TOP) in 2004. “As a pulmonologist, I was acutely aware that my patients newly diagnosed with lung cancer—or those we were worried had lung cancer—were having to deal with very complicated care with many different tests and physicians at a time when they were emotionally and sometimes physically challenged,” she says. Her goal in establishing TOP was to center the care around patients and give them ready and easy access to the variety of specialists necessary to deliver the best care. TOP provides streamlined, multidisciplinary care with physicians specializing in pulmonary medicine, thoracic surgery, medical oncology, radiation oncology, and palliative medicine, supported by a team of nurse coordinators and social workers.

Dr. Tanoue also founded the Yale Lung Screening and Nodule Program—the lung cancer screening program in TOP—after a large national clinical trial in 2011 showed that screening with low-dose radiation CT scans can help diagnose lung cancers early and save lives. Yale’s lung screening program follows the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) screening guidelines, which are based on findings that there are benefits to routine screening for people ages 50 to 80 who have smoked at least 20 pack-years (the number of packs a person smokes each day multiplied by the number of years he or she has smoked), and who are smoking now or who have quit within in the past 15 years.

“That is not the entire group of people at risk, but that is the group of people for whom the USPSTF, which informs Medicare, recommends screenings be done,” Dr. Tanoue says. She also hopes further research will prompt the USPSTF to update its criteria. “For now, even with the reasonably tight population recommendations, screening is saving a lot of lives,” she says.

Dr. Tanoue says she always wanted to be a doctor. “My dad was a doctor, and I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a doctor, too,” Dr. Tanoue says. Her interest in pulmonology may have also come from her father’s experience, as he had severe pulmonary tuberculosis when he was a surgical resident, before there were good medications available to treat it. Dr. Tanoue established the Yale New Haven Hospital Tuberculosis Outreach Program in 1996. The TB outreach program has performed tuberculosis screening in more than ten thousand English-as-a-Second-Language students enrolled at the New Haven Center for Adult Education, and provides a gateway for these newcomers to health care in the United States.

Dr. Tanoue is Vice-chair for Clinical Affairs in the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine and, in that role, helps administrate the largest department at the medical school. She is the founder of the Yale Medical Symphony Orchestra, which is made up of members of the medical center community, including doctors, scientists, nurses, and students of the many graduate programs of the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health, well as physicians and staff at Yale New Haven Hospital, and members of the broader Yale and New Haven community.

All these initiatives have made a difference, but Dr. Tanoue says her most rewarding moments are still in the clinic. “As an academic physician, I have an advantage in that I can wear many different hats. But most of us who became doctors really did so because of the yearning to help people, and the main thing I still really love to do is go to clinic and talk to my patients.”

Clinical Specialties

Pulmonology & Sleep Medicine; Thoracic Oncology; Pulmonary Critical Care

Fact Sheets

Board Certifications

  • Pulmonary Disease

    Certification Organization
    AB of Internal Medicine
    Original Certification Date
    1988
  • Internal Medicine

    Certification Organization
    AB of Internal Medicine
    Original Certification Date
    1985

Yale Medicine News

Get In Touch

Contacts

Secondary Academic Office Number
Appointment Number
Office Fax Number
Clinic Fax Number
Mailing Address

Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine

PO Box 208057, 300 Cedar St.

New Haven, CT 06520-8057

United States

Administrative Support

Locations

  • Patient Care Locations

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