Dr. Axelrod is currently Professor of Surgery and Director of the Kidney, Pancreas, and Living Donor transplant programs at University of Iowa.   Prior to joining Iowa, Dr. David Axelrod served as the Surgical Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation and Section Chief of Solid Organ Transplantation at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center from 2005-16.  In addition, he was a member of the clinical staff at Massachusetts General Hospital and on the faculty of Lahey Clinic in Burlington Massachusetts (2017-18).  His clinical interests include the surgical management of end-stage kidney and liver disease including treatment of hepatic malignancy and portal hypertension, surgical management of type I diabetes mellitus, and chronic pancreatitis.  In addition, he has expertise in minimally invasive hepatic surgery including liver resection and radio-frequency ablation. 

Dr. Axelrod's research interests include surgical outcomes analysis including economic evaluation, Markov modeling, and statistical process control techniques. Previous investigations have examined the economic impact of MELD on liver transplantation, quality outcome monitoring in organ transplantation, steroid free immunosuppression in kidney and pancreas transplants, and geographic disparities in access to organ transplant.