Dr. Leonard Cerullo is widely considered one of the pioneers of laser surgery across the globe.
“I’m not a scientific-type person.”
Behind him on the wall is a framed magazine cover showing the mustachioed doctor holding a model of a brain in an area of medicine he helped remap.
It’s difficult to imagine a man who’s practiced neurosurgery for 40 years - an early pioneer using lasers in the operating room - as "not a scientific-type.”
But the 66-year-old says it’s always been more important to understand how to use a laser as an alternative to opening up a person’s head in surgery rather than understanding all the technology behind it.
“You’ve got to understand the physics a little bit, but understand the application a big bit,” Cerullo says. “[Surgery] boils down to how good are your hands, how good is your judgment?”
Cerullo has taught and practiced across the world and performed the first laser neurosurgeries in Argentina and Brazil. His trailblazing laser surgery and his work in diagnosing and operating on brain tumors is highly regarded in the medical community. He has been featured several times in Chicago Magazine’s Top Doctors issues.
The subject of several news and magazine articles, and a major source in many books on surgery and medicine, Cerullo has been in the public eye for most of his career. And while some have called him a self-promoter, Cerullo said he simply feels obligated to inform.
“I’m doing something I think people should know about, and if I don’t let people know about it, than morally, I’m not cutting it,” he says. “I want people to know that there might be a better way to take care of your hemorrhoids than having someone stick their hand up your ass.”
He’s been performing and developing laser surgery since the 1970s and is the founder and medical director of the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch is likely to discuss.
“You don’t need to know a lot of science to go to medical school,” he says.
After studying English at Georgetown University, Cerullo decided to go to Northwestern University for medical school in the 1970s, where he would later teach. He made the switch because, at the time, med students got more dates, he jokes. But eventually, after standing in on his first surgery almost by mistake, Cerullo realized neurosurgery was for him. As he so often says, “The rest is history.”
Dr. Edward Mkrdichian trained under Cerullo, and credited him for being one of the forefathers of using new, innovative technologies in surgery.
“He was one of the first people involved, and he has been a front man in technology,” “He brought up a lot of people who used innovative technologies.”
Cerullo began working in medicine during a time of major technological advance. As a practicing surgeon he saw the operating microscope, the ultrasonic aspirator and image guidance find their way into the operating room.
And when he began working with lasers and non-invasive surgeries in the 1970s, few were certain what effects lasers might have on sensitive nerve tissue, in places such as the eye, the spine or the brain. But coming of age in a time of such accelerated technological advance made working with cutting-edge technology the norm of Cerullo.
Based on its wavelength, a laser can penetrate and precisely target tissue. This allows surgeons to avoid making incisions and allows for easier surgery on particularly sensitive areas such as the eyes.
“It can be a very powerful, and very dangerous instrument if not used properly,” he says. “So we would try to get these various different lasers and use them on various different tissues and try to discover what the immediate short term and long term effects were.”
The danger of non-invasive surgery lies as much in the hands of the surgeon as it does with the immense power emitted by a laser. Cerullo spent years conducting over 100 practice and experimental surgeries on animals before he finally had what he called “an intimate knowledge” with the laser.
“One of the things you give up with lasers is the tactile input of the tissue to your fingers, and in surgery, that’s really important,” he says. “Your vision and your tactile senses are what allow a surgeon to do what they do.”
Cerullo continued operating until about a year ago. But he still sees patients from across the world everyday and much of his time is spent on the last self-assigned challenge of his career - helping to create a neuroscience institute the serve the entire Midwest.
When he isn’t working, Cerullo spends time with his wife Cheryl and dons his chef's apron as an avid cook. And while he no longer uses his hands to carefully operate a laser, he’s still putting a career’s worth of dexterity to the test.
“I’m just getting decent at typing,” he jokes.
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