photograph courtesy Baptist Medical Group
Dr. Alyssa Throckmorton with Memphis Breast Care
Editor's Note: Every year, the national medical group Castle Connolly produces a list of the best doctors in America. In the Memphis area, the 2021 Top Doctors list comprises more than 270 physicians representing 55 different specialties. Here, we introduce you to a care-givers who hase been named a Top Doc time and again.
Some people take years to choose a successful career, but not Dr. Alyssa Throckmorton, an oncology surgeon with Memphis Breast Care. “At the age of 3 I started telling people that I wanted to be a doctor,” she says. “In fifth grade I decided to be a brain surgeon, and by high school, I wanted to be the orthopaedic surgeon for the LA Lakers.”
Luckily for Memphis, the Los Angeles basketball team wasn’t hiring women physicians, so she shifted her interest to breast surgery. “I always thought anatomy was fascinating,” she says, “and surgery seemed a good way of fixing things.”
“We are structured so that we can take care of the entire spectrum of the community, and I have amazing partners and a staff who help me take care of patients with the kind of excellent, compassionate care that I strive for.”
After earning a degree in psychology from the University of Oklahoma, she graduated from medical school at the University of Texas in Houston. Afterwards came an internship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she met her husband, Dr. Thomas Throckmorton, today an orthopaedic surgeon with Campbell Clinic (and also one of this year’s Top Doctors).
Dr. Alyssa Throckmorton joined Memphis Breast Care, part of the Baptist Medical Group, in 2009. In her practice, she is teamed with two other surgeons — Dr. Lindi Vanderwalde and Dr. Jennifer Zakhireh. Treatment of breast cancer, she says, “is really a team sport,” and at Baptist “we’re very fortunate because we have access to multiple genetic counselors who specialize in oncology.”
Genetic testing and advanced diagnostic techniques are tools that allow cancer surgeons to tailor individualized treatment for patients. In fact, sometimes the personalized approach lets Throckmorton and her colleagues “focus on actually de-escalating the level of care — to improve the survivorship and general quality of life,” she says, noting that for many patients, the side effects of radiation and chemotherapy treatments can be detrimental.
The alternative, she explains, is “substantial improvements in systemic therapy. That’s probably the biggest game-changer in the last 10 or 15 years — the development of specific antibodies that target proteins that cause a type of breast cancer that in the past had a poor outcome.”
The Baptist team is also involved in clinical trials that explore the effectiveness of high-grade imaging. “We’ve been able to demonstrate that these pick up more cancers,” she says, “but we haven’t been able to demonstrate that provides a survival advantage. Are we picking up meaningful things, or are we finding tiny things that may not be clinically significant?”
Other trials examine groups of patients that Throckmorton says have been neglected in the past. “Minorities in particular have been misrepresented in clinical trials,” she says, “and certainly even more so in oncology trials.” In one of the ongoing studies, for example, “We’re trying to identify why Black women with breast cancer have more nerve problems in their hands than other patients.”
Asked what she most enjoys about her work, she answers, “We are structured so that we can take care of the entire spectrum of the community, and I have amazing partners and a staff who help me take care of patients with the kind of excellent, compassionate care that I strive for.”
