Peter R. Carroll, MD, MPH
Peter R. Carroll, MD, MPH
Education
Biography
Dr. Peter Carroll, professor, UCSF Department of Urology, received his undergraduate training at the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating with honors from Georgetown University School of Medicine, he came to UCSF for his general surgery training and urology residency. He completed a fellowship in urologic oncology at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center before joining the faculty of the UCSF Department of Urology in 1986.
Dr. Carroll organized the Urologic Oncology Service, one of the most active multidisciplinary programs at UCSF. In 1996, he assumed the chair of the UCSF Department of Urology and held this position through 2019. During his tenure, the department grew in size serving an increasingly larger patient population, expanded its research programs and attracted the future leaders in the field for training. Under his leadership, the department has been consistently ranking as one of the top urology departments in the country by U.S. News and World Report and has been #1 in research funding by the national Institute of Health for the last 5 years. He takes great pride in the diverse nature of the faculty, trainees and staff.
Dr. Carroll has held many positions at UCSF and continues to participate in the campus at large at many levels. He holds the Ken and Donna Derr-Chevron and the Taube Family Distinguished Professorships. He is Past President of the American Board of Urology (2006-2008).
Dr. Carroll has authored or co-authored over 650 publications. He is an active member of numerous professional medical societies. He is currently principal or co-investigator on numerous scientific studies. His current interests are the study and management of urologic cancers, innovative methods of urinary tract reconstruction, health services research, health policy and the impact of cancer detection and treatment on quality of life.
Dr. Carroll was awarded the 2010 Eugene Fuller Triennial Prostate Award and the SUO Medal from the AUA and SUO, respectively. In 2014, he was also awarded the coveted Barringer Medal from the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons. In 2019, he received the Mostafa M. Elhilali Award from the Societe Internationale D'Urologie. And, in 2020, he received the Whitmore Award from Society of Urologic Oncology.
Clinical Interests
Dr. Carroll’s commitment to compassionate and innovative care spans benign to oncologic urology, with a focus on cancer. As a medical educator, he fosters an environment where clinical expertise is recruited and nurtured.
Dr. Carroll is committed to reducing the burden of prostate cancer treatment– physical, psychological, and monetary. He pioneered and remains a vocal advocate for standardizing an active surveillance regimen in patients with low-volume, early stage prostate cancer. Active surveillance carefully determines which patients can safely postpone radical treatment while still maintaining an acceptably low risk of cancer progression. At the same time, by improving early prognostic capabilities, Dr. Carroll strives to identify which men may benefit from more aggressive early therapies.
Dr. Carroll also demonstrates his concern for patients’ quality of life in the operating room. His drive to perfect nerve-sparing prostatectomy, continent forms of urinary diversion among others has led to many technical innovations.
Research Interests
Dr. Carroll has assembled a team of prominent investigators in the basic, population, and clinical sciences who are dedicated to rapidly translating research findings into clinical care. Under Dr. Carroll’s leadership, the department managed an average of over $10 million in research grants that fund studies ranging from harnessing the power of data to improve urologic health to cancer induction and progression and standards of care. Under his leadership, rankings of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) biomedical research funding put UCSF in first place for urology funding for a fifth consecutive year.
Urologic oncology is a longstanding passion for Dr. Carroll. His research interests in this area include the development of biomarkers to help predict risk for all the major urologic cancers, and outcomes research that aims to improve survival and quality of life for cancer survivors.
Realizing that data is most relevant when larger patterns can be identified, Dr. Carroll has been instrumental in the creation of several patient study groups (cohorts). These including CaPSURE, which he founded in 1995 and which has since enrolled more than 14,000 patients across the United States, and the Prostate cancer Active Surveillance Study (PASS), a multi-institutional cohort supported by the Canary Foundation. In 2013, he was awarded a Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program Transformative Impact Award to “transform and revolutionize” the treatment of prostate cancer.
Dr. Carroll established the UCSF Department of Urology’s comprehensive Tissue Core – a biobank of blood, urine and residual prostate, bladder and renal tissues from more than 6,000 consenting patients. The department also initiated and manages the Urologic Outcomes Database, which records health information for research purposes and to document outcomes of care. This repository of information has lead to many publications, grants and research innovations.
Patient Contact
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415.353.7093 (Fax)
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415.353.7098 (Phone)
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University of California, San Francisco
Department of Urology, Mailcode 1695
550 16th Street, 6th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94143