Dr. Plichta is a breast surgeon at Duke University and serves as the Director of the Breast Risk Assessment Clinic. She earned her BA in Biology from DePauw University, then received her Medical Degree from the Indiana University School of Medicine. During her general surgery residency at the Loyola University Medical Center, she obtained her Master’s degree in Clinical Research Methods and Epidemiology. Dr. Plichta joined the Department of Surgery at Duke in August 2016 after completing her breast surgery fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Plichta’s research focuses on improving the staging system for patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). She is currently working with the American Joint Committee on Cancer to implement a proposal based on her early work. Building on this with the BIRCWH award, she will establish a multi-institutional, curated database of patients with MBC and investigate the impact of clinical and genomic data on prognosis, which will be used to further refine the current staging system.