Ivy League Educated Radiation Oncologist Joins Abben Cancer Center
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on Monday, October 10, 2022
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Cancer
First impressions can make a big difference. Abben Cancer Center and northwest Iowa left a great first impression on Dr. D. B. Nguyen, an Ivy League trained and experience radiation oncologist, when he visited in 2019. That fond memory has drawn him to return to establish a full-time practice.
Three years ago Dr. Nguyen (pronounced ‘Wen’) decided to take a break from his full-time practice to accept temporary positions to provide more flexibility in his schedule for his family. The first assignment he accepted was to provide one week of professional coverage at Abben Cancer Center for a vacationing physician.
“I remember thinking it was just a beautiful place,” Dr. Nguyen said. “Also, I was so impressed with the technology available and the team of health professionals at Abben Cancer Center.” In the following years, Dr. Nguyen traveled to various cancer centers in need of his professional services, including another assignment in Spencer. So, when earlier this year he learned there was an opening for a fulltime radiation oncologist, he reached out to Abben Cancer Center director Mindy Sylvester to express his interest.
“We had started a nationwide search for a new radiation oncologist, which can be a lengthy and challenging process as this level of expertise is rare,” Sylvester shared. “It was such a pleasant surprise to have Dr. Nguyen reach out to us and inquire about the position. We’re thankful that our paths crossed a few years ago as that crossroad in life has lead Dr. Nguyen and his family back to our cancer center and community.”
For Dr. Nguyen, that path to Spencer has been a long and interesting one. Born in Vietnam in the 1960s, he and his family faced the hardships that accompany living in a country at war. When communist forces invaded Saigon, he and several family members were able to escape by climbing onto an open-topped barge with 200 other refugees. That barge traveled down the Saigon River to the open sea, where after days without food or only occasional fresh water from cold, drenching rainstorms, they were fortunately rescued by a U.S. freighter. The family was sponsored by a family in Virginia and established their lives in the United States.
Deemed mentally too slow to start first grade nor second grade in Vietnam, Dr. Nguyen excelled in school in America. As a result, he was awarded an academic scholarship to Harvard. After graduating Magna Cum Laude with highest honors in electronics and optics, he received a scholarship to Dartmouth Medical School. As a medical student, he made a discovery that led to a PhD in biomedical engineering, in addition to earning his medical degree.
Dr. Nguyen was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in radiation oncology at Yale. He received a National Science Foundation NATO post-doctoral Fellowship, one of 50 awarded worldwide by NATO, to spend one year in any NATO country of his choice. He selected Denmark and became a guest professor at Aalborg University. While there, a bureaucratic procedure resulted in his representing Denmark at a NATO Advanced Study Institute in Italy.
He returned to United States for a residency in internal medicine and radiation oncology at Yale University School of Medicine. Upon graduation, he offered an academic position in Boston. Yet, he was interested in practicing medicine in the Midwest and choose to begin his career as a radiation oncologist in Minnesota. While in Minnesota, he became a Hubert Humphrey Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota, where he received an invitation to dinner with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union.
Over the next few years, Dr. Nguyen’s career took him to other parts of the county – to the upper northwest to be near to family, back to the Midwest, and then to Ohio. In 2019, as his bright, curious twin boys turned four years old, Dr. Nguyen sought a more flexible schedule, opting to transition from his fulltime practice to locum tenens work. The first assignment he accepted was that one-week opportunity in Spencer.
“It’s wonderful to return to Spencer and also return to a fulltime oncology practice,” Dr. Nguyen expressed. “The care team at Abben Cancer Center is excellent and the technology available is impressive.”
Dr. Nguyen shared that due to the technology capabilities at Abben, two treatment options will be added. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) – are being incorporated into the array of treatment options available for patient care.
“Both treatments use high-dose radiation therapy, which precisely targets the cancerous cells and spares the surrounding healthy tissue,” Dr. Nguyen explained. “As the name implies, stereotactic body radiation therapy is used for treatment of cancers in various locations of the body. Stereotactic radiosurgery is typically used for treatment of brain tumors.”
In addition to radiation therapy delivered by the linear accelerator, Dr. Nguyen also will work with the local urology team of Dr. David Christ and Dr. Charlotte Caligiuri to offer brachytherapy, a radioactive seed implant procedure used to treat some prostate cancers, as a one-day treatment option, instead of daily treatments over several weeks.
In addition to radiation therapy, Abben Cancer Center provides medical oncology and hematology services. Abben Cancer Center has provided comprehensive cancer treatment services to northwest Iowa and southern Minnesota since opening in 1997.
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