Kenneth D. Candido, MDClinical Professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery, University of Illinois College of Medicine
Dr. Kenneth D. Candido is Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology and Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. Dr. Candido is a highly visible presence regionally and nationally in the pain management community. He was an academic chairman of an anesthesiology residency training program and pain medicine fellowship program in Chicago from 2007-2021.
Dr. Candido spent the first two years of medical school in Tampico, Mexico, then completed the educational curriculum at The New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York. He took an internship and residency in Anesthesiology at The Metropolitan Hospital in New York. During that time, Ken met Dr. Alon P. Winnie, one of the founding fathers of the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and one of the nation’s leaders in education regarding pain medicine who at the time was Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He offered Dr. Candido a Fellowship spot there, which Dr. Candido completed in 1988. Shortly thereafter, he returned to his roots on the East Coast, landing a position in the Department of Anesthesiology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
At Lenox Hill, Dr. Candido established a first-of-its-kind pain clinic, which he staffed daily after completing his anesthesiology duties in the operating rooms. In the eight years at Lenox Hill, Dr. Candido treated more than 20,000 patients suffering from a variety of both routine as well as complex pain entities.
In 1997, Dr. Candido was asked by Dr. Winnie, to rejoin his faculty at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, and the two collaborated on a number of successful and highly regarded projects and publications. As Dr. Winnie prepared for retirement in 2001, however, Dr. Candido determined his future lay elsewhere, and so joined the prestigious Anesthesiology and Pain Management Department at Northwestern University Medical Center, where he was quickly promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and was placed in a Director Role over the Acute Pain Program. In 2005, Dr. Candido joined Loyola University Medical Center as Program Director of the Pain Management Fellowship Program and as Chief of the Pain Division. At Loyola, Dr. Candido was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology.
Dr. Candido has more than two hundred (200) original peer-referenced papers on a variety of topics related to controlling pain. He has also written more than ninety-five (95) textbook chapters on diverse areas of pain control and has lectured to international audiences on the complex nature of pain and its treatment. Several of his works deal with finding appropriate solutions to dealing with painful conditions in patients who have underlying or iatrogenic addictive diseases which often blurs the distinction between therapy aimed at physiological ailments versus those designed to combat psychological distress. He has delivered 1,000 continuing medical education seminars and lectures worldwide on topics related to anesthesiology and pain management.
Dr. Candido is part of an international stem cell treatment program which has ongoing research into chronic pain and neurological conditions. To date, the investigators have published several peer-reviewed scientific papers on the use of pluri-potent human mesenchymal stem cells and Exosomes for conditions including ALS, Multiple Sclerosis, autism spectrum, as well as neuropathic pain from the spine and extremities.
Dr. Candido was born in New Jersey, attended Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating in 1979. He lives in the Chicago metropolitan area with his family including four children ranging in ages from 19 to 43.
