By Denise Chan
Daily Bruin Contributor
The UCLA Department of Neurosurgery lost associate professor and
Medical School Admissions Committee member Elliott E. Blinderman.
He was killed at the age of 70 in a traffic collision on Jan.
22.
The doctor’s co-workers found his death to be a source of
sorrow.
“It’s a very sad thing,” said Patricia
McDonough, Chair of the Education Department in the Graduate School
of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. “I talked to
him just two weeks before his death. He was very bright, very
quick, very energetic. He was 70, but you would have never known
it.”
“He had creative ideas and was not afraid to express his
ideas either,” she added.
Colleague Ulrich Batzdorf, who attended medical training with
Blinderman at UCLA and delivered his eulogy at the funeral, agreed,
saying apart from his medical duties, Blinderman took time to
entertain his other hobbies.
“He was intensely bright and creative,” Batzdorf
said. “He loved the outdoors, he was interested in growing
orchids, he loved birds.”
Blinderman worked for 40 years at UCLA, beginning at
UCLA’s National Institute of Mental Health, where he began as
a neurosurgical assistant resident in 1962 before going on to
educate assistant residents and medical students in clinical work
at the UCLA Medical Center, Batzdorf said.
Here, he became notable for his work on the increase in brain
volume as a result of excess water in brain tissue and the labeling
of brain abscesses ““ pus within the brain area ““ which
were key in monitoring the collapse of the brain until the
introduction of the CAT scan in the mid seventies.
McDonough, who had been in charge of clinical administration,
said Blinderman guided residents around the hospital and taught the
clinical proper evaluation of patients and the prescription of
proper treatments. Practicing patient care in his part-time
professorship was a job he largely enjoyed, Batzdorf continued.
Batzdorf said aside from his efforts at UCLA, Blinderman
performed spinal surgery at his private practice in Beverly Hills
and also practiced at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, working there
from 1966 until his death.
Blinderman is survived by his wife of 42 years, Barbara, his
three children, Lisa, Jonathan, and Jennifer, and his
brother-in-law, Ronald, Batzdorf said.
“He loved his family,” McDonough said. “He
loved his children, and he was very close to his wife.”
Donations can be made to the National Museum of Wildlife Art,
P.O. Box 6825, Jackson Hole, WY 83002, or to the Elliott E.
Blinderman Memorial Fund at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, 8701 W.
Third St., No. 190, Los Angeles, CA 90048.