Top Doctors 2006

The region’s best physicians, their advice on how to ward off 12 killer diseases, and what local researchers and, well, weirdos are doing to try and cheat death

By Sandy Hingston

Our Top Doctors list, below, has always been the gold standard for those seeking the finest medical care in the Philadelphia area. This year, we’ve again teamed up with Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. to bring you the local doctors other doctors say they’d choose to tend to their family members. We’ve included a glossary of the American Board of Medical Specialties categories we use and a thorough explanation of just how Castle Connolly compiles its Top Doctors list.

Then we went a step further. We asked Castle Connolly to find us the local doctors with the strongest track records — top vote-getters in Castle Connolly’s surveys, with prestigious faculty appointments and clinical backgrounds — for each of 12 top killer diseases in the United States: heart disease, Alzheimer’s, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, emphysema, and the six most common kinds of cancer: skin, breast, colon, prostate, pancreatic and lung. We went to these 12 extraordinary doctors and picked their brains on the latest research in their fields, the newest methods of treatment, and solid advice on how not to wind up in their offices someday. Then Bill Cramer photographed the doctors in a nod to the famous Biblical prescription: “Physician, heal thyself.”

There’s health, and then there’s health. We’re all for long life, but when we heard that a Drexel University researcher was in the race to win the famed Methuselah Prize — for the longest-living mouse on record — we couldn’t help wondering: Who’d want to live forever? So we sent writer-at-large Kathleen Fifield to find out. She turned up gene manipulators, genius professors, dwarf rodents, a “longevity hormone,” and members of the Calorie Restriction Society (big fun, eh?). Her report on local efforts to beat the Grim Reaper is here.