Lester Layfield, MD, is a professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine, where he is director of the Division of Surgical Pathology and vice chairman of Anatomic Pathology at ARUP Laboratories. He serves on the Sarcoma Services multidisciplinary care team at Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Layfield’s special interests are in musculoskeletal pathology, head and neck pathology, and breast pathology. He has expertise in fine-needle aspiration cytology, which is a process that uses a thin needle to draw material tissue from the body. The cells are then studied under a microscope to determine if abnormalities such as cancer are present.

Layfield received his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also completed his residency. He has published widely and has authored textbooks on musculoskeletal cytopathology and head and neck cytopathology. He has served as reviewer and editor for a number of scientific journals, including Cancer, the Journal of Urology, Journal of Surgical Oncology, and Modern Pathology, and on the editorial boards of Diagnostic Cytopathology and Cancer/Cytopathology. Layfield was named one of America’s Top Physicians by the Consumers’ Research Council of America in 2003.