It was a moment that Andrew Kaufman, MD, could only describe as “auspicious.” A longtime patient, Carmen, was coming in for a checkup. She is a sunny 69-year-old who has never smoked, but still was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer. Five years ago, Dr. Kaufman removed her tumor in an advanced, minimally invasive procedure. Now, he had good news.
“It has been five years, and nothing has recurred,” he said. “I know it has been a long run, but this is the best news. You made it, you survive, and you have a clean bill of health.”
For Dr. Kaufman, vice chair of the Department of Thoracic Surgery at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, patients like Carmen are close to his heart—and central to his research and clinical practice. He is on a mission to educate people, especially women, about a disease that many are unaware of: nonsmoking lung cancer.
“One of the biggest myths undermining health today is, ‘I never smoked, so I can’t get lung cancer,’” said Dr. Kaufman, a surgeon whose program at Mount Sinai for never-smokers has treated nearly a thousand patients over the last decade. At first, Asian women were found to be at highest risk, and the disease was thought to be mainly limited to that population. But that has changed.
“Unfortunately, what we’re seeing more and more commonly is that plenty of people who never smoked a single cigarette can develop lung cancer, and we’re seeing it in everybody—women and men of every ethnicity,” Dr. Kaufman said. His group’s recent research, based on an analysis of Mount Sinai’s large and growing database of nonsmoking lung cancer patients, found that never-smoking lung cancers were more likely to occur in younger, female and Hispanic people, which is remarkable because it reveals that it is occurring in a diverse group of people.
Dr. Kaufman predicts that within 20 years, about half of all lung cancer cases will be among nonsmokers. This is because fewer people are smoking, so a larger proportion of people will have nonsmoking lung cancer—which appears to be a distinct and different disorder.
Caring for the Community
Dr. Kaufman’s passion to detect, treat, and in many cases, cure nonsmoking lung cancer emerged during his training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where he was part of the team that identified mutations in a gene called EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) as a risk factor for the disease.
About 15 years ago, Dr. Kaufman joined Mount Sinai, because of its long history of doing successful outreach in the local community, and because of its overall excellence. The Mount Sinai Hospital—ranked No. 6 in the nation for Cancer by U.S. News & World Report for 2025-26—offers a full range of medical services. And patients have access to the vast resources of the Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center, including The Tisch Cancer Institute, a world leader in cancer research.
“My goal was to get the expertise in nonsmoking lung cancer that I acquired over 20 years of learning out to the community, and Mount Sinai was 100% supportive from the get-go,” Dr. Kaufman said. That support enabled Dr. Kaufman, who is half-Chinese, to establish the Mount Sinai Asian Thoracic Surgery Program in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown. His motivation was also deeply personal: two close family members had died from nonsmoking lung cancer.
Through health fairs and other educational events, his team alerts the community about the symptoms to look for, how to get care, and how to minimize exposure to risks. “What’s really important to me is that our program provides world-leading, dedicated care to everybody, regardless of their socioeconomic class,” Dr. Kaufman said. “We also try to take away the fear. We let people know that it’s not their fault if they get cancer, and if they get symptoms like a cough that won’t go away, shortness of breath, or chest discomfort, they shouldn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed to see a practitioner.”
The team also encourages community members to try to reduce risks. Beyond a genetic predisposition, “some of the most compelling data implicate the environments people live in, including exposure to high amounts of cooking fumes and high amounts of secondhand smoke in the home, if a family member is a heavy smoker,” Dr. Kaufman said. In addition, recent studies suggest that exposure to air pollutants—especially small particulate matter—is also a big risk factor.
It Takes a Team
Mount Sinai’s Asian Thoracic Surgery program is multidisciplinary, staffed by multilingual physicians familiar with Asian culture who offer both emotional support and quality medical care. The team of experts includes radiologists, oncologists, pulmonologists, pathologists and surgeons who work together daily using the latest technology to treat the cancer and perform operations that couldn’t be done 10 years ago, when the program opened.
One of the most highly effective innovations is minimally invasive surgery, a procedure that leaves most of the lung intact and results in almost no blood loss. “Using robotic bronchoscopy, we’re able to find the smallest spots in the lung and leave a fluorescent or blue dye in that area,” Dr. Kaufman explained. “This allows me to use robotic surgery to remove the smallest amount of lung necessary to cure the cancer. We now do this routinely, whereas once it was unthinkable—and the result is that the patient can return to everyday life much more quickly.”
Advocating for Screening
Dr. Kaufman is now focused on diagnosing nonsmoking lung cancer at the earliest possible stage, providing patients with the best possible outcomes and quality of life for years to come. “We need to plan ahead now as a nation and as individual health providers to avoid being overwhelmed by this new wave of nonsmoking lung cancer,” he said. “The holy grail will be for us to develop screening tests that can help us identify people before they have symptoms so we can get them into care and get them cured.”
With this in mind, Dr. Kaufman is leading a drive to secure funding for a lung cancer screening protocol and a research component to explore the science behind never-smoking lung cancer.
At the same time, as a clinician, he treats and reassures patients, like Carmen, whose lives initially may be thrown into disarray. “We know that a diagnosis is scary, but we’re here to help,” Dr. Kaufman said. “Our dedicated and caring team at Mount Sinai is here for these patients, ensuring that everyone gets the very best care. We want to make sure they understand that there are definitely good treatments available, and that we can keep them healthy for a long, long time.”
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