Love, War and Oncology: Dr. Roy Ashikari's Journey to Hudson Valley Hospital

In the past fifty years Hudson Valley’s Dr. Roy Ashikari, of Yorktown, has treated thousands of women with breast cancer. He has even prevented breast cancer in high-risk women by performing prophylactic surgery, a rare surgery he and his son pioneered that is not taught in medical schools. It prevents the trauma of a mastectomy by removing potentially cancerous tissue before cancer occurs and replacing the breast in just one operation.

At 80-years-old Dr. Roy, as his patients call him, has embarked on a new journey-opening the Ashikari Breast Center at Hudson Valley Hospital’s new Cancer Center to open Nov. 15. He will continue to treat patients at his Dobbs Ferry Breast Center, but has opened his new Cortlandt Manor location to better reach patients in northern Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange counties. He has been working from a temporary location at HVHC since the summer.

But at the start of his career, Dr. Ashikari was unable to attract any patients at all, and he had no interest in breast cancer. While his intellect, work ethic and compassion led Ashikari to be the man he is today, it was World War II, the Korean War, his first love and Dr. Edward Beattie, former Chief of Surgery at Sloan Kettering, that led him to become a world-leading oncologist.

Ashikari delivers his life story slowly, with long pauses between ideas and with a noticeable Japanese accent that he has held on to after 53 years in New York.

Ashikari was 14-years-old when Japan and the Axis forces were defeated in World War II. He and his family were forced to leave Manchuria and move to Tokoyo with nothing more than a single bag. 

“My father had to start from scratch and he asked me to be a doctor,” Ashikari said.

So he went on to graduate from medical school in Japan and asked his father for permission to go to the United States to practice.

“I saw the United States as a very strong almighty country in the world. After the Korean war…it actually concurred the world.”

“Because of the (Korean) war, all the (U.S.) doctors who had graduated from medical school were drafted, and there were not enough doctors to take care of all the U.S. citizens,” Ashikari said.

So he took advantage of United States exchange program that brought foreign students to serve as interns or residents. The program was to end in a few years and Ashikari was to return to Japan. But then he fell in love.

Losing His Wife to Cancer

“When I was a resident (at Mount Sinai hospital) I met a young American girl. She was only 19 years old. I was 27. She had an Irish background, she was very lovely and grew up in the Bronx.”

After getting permission from his father, Ashikari married his first wife in 1959. But four years later she was diagnosed with colon cancer, which led him to decide to move on to Sloane Kettering for a two-and-a-half year surgical fellowship.

“Why did I become a cancer surgeon? Because of my wife.”

His wife was operated on but the cancer recurred less than two years later. The second operation was futile, as the cancer had spread, eventually leading to her death at age 27. Ashikari remarried to his current wife who was a nurse at Sloan Kettering.

The Chief of Surgery at the time, Dr. Edward Beattie, asked Ashikari to stay at Sloane Kettering as a surgeon.

“It was an honor because I was the first foreigner to become an attending surgeon.”

“I liked liver surgery. It was very primitive at the time and it was interesting, challenging. Breast was limited and simple.”

But Beattie wanted Ashikari to specialize in the breast field to fill a departed senior surgeon’s spot.

Beattie promised to move Ashikari to gastro-intestinal surgery when he hoped to combine several different oncology services. But the plans fell through which led to Ashikari becoming a leading expert on breast cancer, for a lack of anything else to do.

No Patients, A Lot of Time

Ashikari’s current patients have the lack of past patients in the 1970s to thank for his extraordinary care and expertise.

Because no one knew who he was and other doctors at Sloane Kettering who were well known already had patients, Ashikari had to find something to do. 

“For the first two to three years no one came to me. I had nothing to do so I wrote papers (on breast cancer).”

Sloane Kettering had about 900-1000 patients a year at that time which gave him a large number of cases to study. He wrote papers on DCIS, non-invasive cancer, Pagat disease of the nipple and pre-cancerous legion of the breast. He has won many prestigious awards and written dozens more leading papers since that time.

He presented the papers at lectures all over the world and business started to pick up. He became the Chief of Breast Services in 1976.  From there he has worked as a top breast surgeon at several other New York hospitals, including the Westchester Medical Center, Our Lady of Mercy, Dobbs Ferry Hospital and others.

His early papers helped lead him to develop his prophylactic mastectomy surgery for high-risk patients that he performs with his son and Dr. Andrew Salzberg today.

They perform a gene test and look at patient history and perform the surgery for women who have an 80-85 percent chance of getting cancer. They make special incisions to remove tissue and then reconstruct the breast with a special technique during the same operation.

“We have excellent results,” Ashikari said.  

The team has performed more than 300 surgeries that no one else in the country can perform, Ashikari said.

“No one else does this in the country. Our technique is different. People don’t believe it because they cannot do it the way we do.”

The Ashikaris are publishing a paper within a few months and will lecture on the leading surgery. Ashikari says this will lead to wider practice of the unique procedure.

Because no other surgeons can offer the procedure with such a proven success rate, women have traveled across the world for the unique surgery.

But others have traveled long distances for less than that –just to consult with the well-reputed Dr. Roy.

Meeting His Patients Half Way

New York women have traveled for hours to consult with Dr. Roy, knowing of his reputation for being a leading expert with a heart for his patients fears and concerns.

Now that he has joined with the Hudson Valley Hospital Center, he will be meeting many of those women half way, literally.

“I have enough business,” Dr. Roy explained. “But if we didn’t come to (HVHC) there would be no breast cancer center in the area.”

Today, the temporary Ashikari Breast Center is located beside the Emergency Department and consists of Dr. Roy, his son Andrew Ashikari and Dr. Pond Kelemen. The three surgeons will move into the brand newonce it opens Nov. 15. Then, all the infusion, chemotherapy, support services and radiology equipment will be in one place right next to their offices. The mammography suite will be connected to them by a back door so patients can go right in to get tests done without having to change.

Ashikari is excited to be part of the HVHC’s growth and says that the hospital administration was a major deciding factor in his joining the team. In addition to having a brand new facility to work from, Ashikari has found the administration to be cooperative and understanding.

“The people here are so nice,” Ashikari said. “It is beautiful and the atmosphere is great. I knew this hospital twenty years ago and it was so small. It is amazing (what they’ve done).”

One of Dr. Roy’s patients from twenty years ago, 58-year-old Hopewell Junction Nancy Scolfield, is still seeing him today. Ashikari treated Scolfield in 1992 at Westchester Medical Center when she needed a mastectomy. She has been visiting him every six months since and went through another operation with him this past August at his new location at Hudson Valley Hospital Center.

Her cancer recurred and she needed a partial mastectomy.

“Within two days of the surgery I felt great and was out and about,” Scolfield said.

“The first time I was an emotional wreck,” Scolfield said, explaining that Dr. Ashikari helped get her into surgery quickly after she refused a biopsy.

“To be very cliché about it and to be very honest, he is very kind, compassionate and caring, very professional, cares about his patients,” Scolfield said.

The Ashikari Breast Center at Hudson Valley Hospital will offer the same service to breast cancer patients in the Hudson Valley region, and to those who travel from across the world.

The hospital and Dr. Ashikari pride themselves on being able to provide an environment that nurtures women during what is, for many, the hardest period of their lives. Specifically, the Center offers: a 72-hour turnaround from the initial exam to surgical treatment; Sparing more than 70 percent of patients more extensive surgery by determining whether cancer has spread to the lymph nodes before initial surgery; Immediate reconstructive surgery during mastectomies to avoid repeated surgery; and A one-stage prophylactic mastectomy with immediate reconstruction to prevent breast cancer in patients with high-genetic risk.