Dr. Donato Dumlao serves as assistant professor of interdisciplinary clinical oncology at the USA Mitchell Cancer Institute, with a special focus on palliative medicine and cancer pain management.

He received his medical degree from the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center College of Medicine in the Philippines in 1987. He moved to Chicago in 1995, where he completed his training in internal medicine at The Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center and the University of Illinois at Chicago affiliated program.

In 1999, he returned to the Philippines for two years, serving as a staff physician for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic. In 2001, he returned to the U.S. where he worked as a hospitalist-internist at the Abbeville Memorial Hospital in South Carolina, and at Decatur General Hospital in Alabama, and then as a clinical instructor at the Staten Island University Hospital in New York. He then completed a fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine and cancer pain management at the University of South Florida’s H. Lee Moffit Cancer Center in June 2008.

Dr. Dumlao has received awards from the VA and American Legion, and also received the service excellence award from the Staten Island University Hospital.

USA Mitchell Cancer Institute Director and Abraham A. Mitchell Chair Dr. Michael Boyd said of Dr. Dumlao, “We are extremely fortunate to have Dr. Donato Dumlao on the MCI team. He is the only physician in the region specifically trained and board-certified for supportive care of cancer patients. Donato is a key player in our comprehensive oncology healthcare enterprise.”

The goal of Dr. Dumlao is to provide excellent care for the palliation of symptoms associated with cancer and its treatment, whether such patients present with these symptoms during the early curable stage of their illness or near the end of life. More than 50 percent of cancer patients have pain on initial evaluation and over 80 percent of these patients have poorly controlled moderate to severe pain that affects their day-to-day activity. His service makes a difference to these patients.

“A patient once told me, ‘If I do not have pain, I forget everything about my cancer,’” Dr. Dumlao said. “That motivates me to keep helping patients deal with this pain during their illness or near the end of their lives.”