Alumni Profile: Stephen E. Pautler

Stephen E. Pautler, MD, FRCSC,

Stephen Pautler

BSc ’92 Co-op Chemistry

Associate Professor of Surgery and Oncology, Western University, London, ON

Dr. Pautler pioneered robotic surgery for prostate cancer and has championed robotic surgery services for urology surgery. Following five years of surgical training in the urology residency at The University of Western Ontario, Dr. Pautler spent two years of post-graduate surgical training at the National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, performing both clinical and basic science research in minimally invasive interventions for urologic cancers. Additionally, he worked on molecular cloning and signal transduction mechanisms in kidney and prostate cancer, before joining the staff the Department of Surgery at Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western, in 2002. During the evolution of his career, he developed the first robotic surgery program in Canada and has performed the most robotic surgeries of any surgeon in any surgical discipline.

An active patient advocate and highly regarded teacher and researcher, he has co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, several chapters, has presented at numerous international urology meetings, and has been successful in obtaining peer-reviewed grant funding. He is a Canadian expert in hereditary kidney cancer syndromes and robotic surgery.  Dr. Pautler provides leadership in provincial health care in his roles as the Southwest Regional Surgical Oncology Lead for Cancer Care Ontario and the Provincial Lead for Urologic Surgery, Access to Care.  His current interests include surgical quality improvement, robotics, the application of minimally-invasive surgical techniques and image-guided ablative procedures for urologic cancers.