A Passion for Neuroscience Nurtured at Rutgers
Renowned New Jersey neurosurgeon Ciro Randazzo credits Rutgers for inspiring his career.
Ciro Randazzo fondly recalls his days as a medical student working with Professor Richard Lehman in the Department of Neurosurgery at Rutgers University’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS).
“Dr. Lehman was just such a true gentleman, an extremely excellent surgeon with a great relationship with his patients,” Randazzo says of Lehman, who died in 2022 at the age of 84. “He performed deep brain stimulation surgery for Parkinson’s Disease. He would place an electrode into an area of the brain that would reduce or stop their tremors, having an immediate impact on their neurological function. The patients would have immediate and significant improvement in their quality of life.”
That experience is just one that developed in Randazzo “a passion for neuroscience.” He credits numerous inspiring mentors at Rutgers for helping him to launch an exceptional career as a neurosurgeon performing many vascular neurosurgeries—the treatment of brain aneurysms or arterial venous malformations or stroke—and spinal surgeries.
Randazzo, who grew up in North Jersey in Garfield and Franklin Lakes, received his master’s in public health from Rutgers School of Public Health (then UMDNJ/Rutgers University) in 1999, with a concentration on health care planning and administration. He pursued this degree to help prepare for medical school and ended up loving both the faculty and the curriculum, he says.
“I think that the principles that I learned at the School of Public Health and my medical schoolwork at Robert Wood (Johnson Medical School) really helped me build comprehensive stroke programs at the hospitals where I've worked,” he says.
He graduated from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in 2003. “I really felt at home,” he says. “All the faculty were so welcoming, and I thought they just had this amazing fund of knowledge because most of them were participating in research and doing studies in their fields of expertise. They were just so open and accommodating.”
After his neurosurgical residency and fellowship training at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, he started practicing there and later in Atlantic City. Randazzo says he then decided to move back to North Jersey where he was a founding partner and medical director at Northeast Regional Surgery Center in Paramus, a partner and director for Igea Brain & Spine NJ/NY, medical director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson and neurosurgical attending at Igea Brain & Spine. In addition, Randazzo serves as clinical professor of neurological surgery at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.
A New Jersey Native
Randazzo’s parents moved to New Jersey from Sicily in 1967, eight years before he was born. His father owned a café and became a building contractor.
Growing up in New Jersey with five siblings, three sisters and two brothers, in a family of contractors and blue-collar workers, Randazzo looked up to the physician in his neighborhood. “I kind of thought from a young age that I wanted to be a physician,” Randazzo says, adding, “in high school, I thought I should go to Johns Hopkins if I wanted to be a doctor because that is where doctors come from.”
Randazzo played fullback and linebacker on the football team at Don Bosco Prep, where he also wrestled. He later went for his undergraduate degree in biology at Johns Hopkins University where he played rugby.
His next stop was graduate school at Rutgers, where Randazzo says he found an uplifting learning environment. “It really started with the School of Public Health. I just really loved the curriculum and the faculty, especially Dr. Mark Robson, and what I realized was that when you're in a more collegial environment and you're really enjoying the people around you and the material, it makes it easier to be successful.”
And at RWJMS, he says he had the opportunity to learn from patients. “The clinical rotations were excellent as we moved out of the classroom, going to multiple hospitals and interacting with patients. I feel like patients in New Jersey are just so happy and appreciative to have medical students and residents helping to take care of them.”
He said he’s proud of the quality of care in his home state.
“Being involved at Rutgers ultimately made me want to see how I could contribute to having world-class neurosurgical and stroke care in the state,” he says, adding the best health care, medical research, and medical education are available right here in New Jersey. “You don't need to go to New York or Philadelphia. You can find excellent research and schools and hospitals right here in New Jersey,” he says.
A Rutgers Focus on Patients
Randazzo credits RWJMS for teaching students to focus on the humanity of the patient, resulting in better and more caring physicians.
“Rutgers Medical School has a large focus on caring directly for the patient and really using the biopsychosocial model to treat patients,” Randazzo says. “So, they teach students to really look at all the inputs and put the patient first.”
The medical school put a particular emphasis on “a holistic approach to the patient and all the factors that are relevant to a patient's health. The humanity of the patient was really a primary focus at every step in four years, which I don't think you get at every medical school.”
Earlier this year, Randazzo attended an event supporting the Rutgers Brain Health Institute, where he felt a “natural connection” to the research, he says. “I think they're doing groundbreaking research of the highest caliber at Robert Wood and at Rutgers and it's really encouraging to see that work going on.”
The new HELIX building, currently under construction in New Brunswick, is another example of the great work of the university, he says. “Obviously Rutgers is still bringing together academics and private industry which is opening up more opportunities for the students and the community.”
Randazzo says he is pleased that his daughter Antonina transferred to Rutgers this fall after two years at Louisiana State University.
His daughter told him that she wants to specialize in neuroscience. “She really loves it. She's rotated with some other physicians, and she loves everything she sees, which is a good problem to have.”
Randazzo says he supports Rutgers Health programs because he thinks it’s important and considers New Jersey his home. “I think that we've had so much opportunity here for my whole family, including my parents who came from another country and didn't even speak the language,” he says. “Fortunately, we’ve been very successful in the state. I was very successful at Rutgers and at medical school, and I think everybody's always been willing to help and give us an opportunity to achieve more in New Jersey, and especially at Rutgers.”
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