- College of Medicine Faculty News
Dr. Ramón Rodríguez, a board certified neurologist who specializes in the treatment of movement disorders, tremors, dystonia and Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases, has joined UCF Health, the College of Medicine clinical practice. He is also an expert in the non-narcotic treatment of chronic migraine headaches, specifically through the use of Botox.
In addition to caring for UCF Health patients, Dr. Rodríguez also serves as a professor of medicine at the medical school and cares for patients at the Orlando VA Medical Center.
Before coming to UCF, Dr. Rodríguez was a clinical associate professor of neurology and director of clinical services at the University of Florida Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration. He also served as director of the Tyler’s Hope Center of Excellence for Comprehensive Dystonia Care and director of the Clinical Trials Center for Neurological Disorders. He was also on staff as a neurologist at Shands at the University of Florida.
Dr. Rodríguez is one of the leading physicians in Florida for the treatment of Huntington’s disease, a genetic neurological disorder that leads to the progressive breakdown of nerve cells in the brain. The debilitating condition impacts virtually all of a patient’s functions, including movement, cognitive abilities and psychiatry. Because there are so few experts in Florida, local patients with the condition have traditionally had to travel to areas like Miami and Atlanta for care.
His Botox therapy for migraine headaches is intended for patients who have more than 15 headaches a month lasting more than four hours each. Research has shown that the Botox treatments result in a 50 percent or more improvement in frequency and severity of the headaches. Dr. Rodríguez does not prescribe narcotic treatments for migraine pain.
In addition to providing care to patients, Dr. Rodríguez also has an extensive research portfolio on a variety of neurological issues including Parkinson’s disease and deep brain stimulation. As a member of the global Parkinson’s Study Group, he works with researchers and specialists from the nation’s top medical centers including Harvard, Emory, Baylor and UCLA.
Dr. Rodríguez received his M.D. from the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus. He did his internship in internal medicine and his residency in neurology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas. He did his fellowship training in movement disorders and surgery for movement disorders at the University of Florida College of Medicine.
He said he was drawn to UCF because of Orlando’s multicultural community and because the new Medical City brings together medical education, research and patient care in a spirit of excellence and innovation. “Medical City is becoming an incubator for medical professionals to be able to do high quality research and provide high quality treatments,” he said. “Here we can create a big change in healthcare and a big change in many lives.”
Contact UCF Health at 407-266-3627 (DOCS) or https://ucfhealth.com/