Photo of smiling white female faculty member with short curly brown hair, Dr. Lisa Orloff, Professor of Otolaryngology at Stanford University.
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty

Dr. Lisa A. Orloff, MD, FACS, FACE is Director of the Endocrine Head and Neck Surgery Program and Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology, Division of Head and Neck Surgery, at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is Director of the Stanford Thyroid Tumor Program within the Stanford Cancer Center. Her clinical practice focuses on the surgical management of thyroid and parathyroid tumors and disorders.

Dr. Orloff is an internationally recognized leader in the field of endocrine head and neck surgery. She is also an expert in the application of ultrasonography to the diagnosis and management of diseases of the head and neck, with an emphasis on thyroid cancer. Dr. Orloff performs minimally invasive ultrasound-guided procedures such as radiofrequency ablation for the nonsurgical management of appropriate thyroid pathology. Her background in microvascular and laryngeal surgical techniques lends a unique level of refinement to her endocrine surgical practice. A major component of her clinical work is the management of persistent or recurrent thyroid cancer. Dr. Orloff’s multidisciplinary approach to the management of endocrine head and neck disease involves collaboration with her colleagues in other specialties at Stanford and throughout the country. Dr. Orloff also studies the regeneration of tissue that has been lost as a result of cancer therapies.

Dr. Orloff received her bachelor’s degree at Stanford, and her medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She completed her residency in Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Washington and a visiting fellowship in Microvascular & Reconstructive Surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford, she was the Robert K. Werbe Distinguished Professor in Head and Neck Cancer, and Chief of the Division of Head and Neck Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF.)

Dr. Orloff served three consecutive terms as the Chair of the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) Endocrine Surgery committee, and served for many years as a voting member of the FDA’s Panel to evaluate medical devices for Otolaryngology. She holds leadership roles within the American Head and Neck Society, the American Thyroid Association, the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, and the American College of Surgeons. She is co-chair of the ACS Thyroid, Parathyroid, and Neck Ultrasound training program and a member of the ACS National Ultrasound Faculty executive board. She is also a member of such influential teams as the National Cancer Institute (NCI) steering committee on Thyroid Cancer Clinical Trials and the Endocrine Surgery Committee of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinology (AACE). She authored the leading textbook, Head and Neck Ultrasonography (Plural Publishing), as a reference for clinicians; the second edition was published in 2017. Dr. Orloff is a former Fulbright scholar.