Christopher M. Morton, MD

Christopher Morton, MD, is a pulmonary and critical care specialist with advanced training in interventional pulmonology. He often works with patients who have lung cancer or advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In addition, he practices general pulmonary medicine and cares for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Dr. Morton wanted to be a physician since childhood. He later volunteered at hospitals and was an emergency medical technician before deciding in medical school that he wanted to work in intensive care. “I enjoy helping patients through difficult diagnoses, which can be an emotional and distressing time in their lives,” he says. “Helping someone understand what is wrong with them and how we can help them gives them the strategies for coping and moving forward.”

Many patients Dr. Morton cares for are very sick or have advanced cancer. “It is a difficult time for them, but helping them through such times, or working with these patients or their families to have a more meaningful and comfortable life in the time they have left can be very rewarding, even in the face of terminal disease,” he says.

Dr. Morton is also a researcher who has focused on tracheostomy, a procedure to create a hole in the neck to assist with breathing, in patients with COVID-19. He is also interested in new advances he says will allow patients who have cancer to be diagnosed and treated earlier. One of these is robotic bronchoscopy for biopsies of lung nodules. “It is much safer and has fewer side effects than other types of lung biopsies, and it will allow us to get much smaller and much more peripheral nodules,” he says.