Dr. Mark Cilo, who pioneered the team approach to treating people with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, died unexpectedly July 31 at his Lone Tree home. He was 65.
The cause of death hasn’t been determined, said his wife, Janie Cilo.
A service is planned at 2 p.m. Friday at Craig Hospital’s gymnasium, 3425 S. Clarkson St.
A neurologist, Cilo had worked at Craig for years, treating people who had been injured in everything from knife fights to helicopter accidents.
Mark Cilo was “a visionary” in his ideas of treating patients with brain and spinal column injuries, said a colleague, Dr. Alan Weintraub.
His “vision” was to treat patients with a comprehensive system that included a team usually made up of nurses, family counselors, speech, physical, occupational and recreational therapists, all meeting with the doctors and the family, his wife said.
The aim was to do more than treat the physical problems. It was to work with the person and his or her family on the “emotional, psychological and social levels,” Weintraub said. When Cilo began the team style in 1978, “it was unique,” Weintraub said.
“He was incredibly smart, generous and competent,” Weintraub said. The effort was “to help people get their lives back, including school, work and relationships,” he said.
Cilo made it clear to staff they should meet with family members face to face. “Don’t talk to a telephone,” he’d tell them, his wife said.
Cilo “was emblematic of all the things that can be done” for people with brain injuries, said Bill Levis, whose son, John Levis, suffered a brain injury four years ago, at age 19.
He helped Levis and his wife, Ann Levis, “with our outlook,” as well as getting John Levis into “adventure camps” that Craig set up. Though his son still has problems, he can now walk on his own and snowboard, said Levis, who lives in Arapahoe County. “He is one of thousands who Mark Cilo helped,” Levis said.
Cilo did consulting work at several area hospitals, wrote many articles and spoke to numerous medical groups in Colorado and other states about brain injury rehabilitation.
Mark P. Cilo was born in Philadelphia on April 10, 1944, earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
He started out as an electrical engineer, earning a doctorate in physics, his wife said. For a time he worked on Navy radar systems.
But his mother urged him to go to medical school, so he did.
The engineering background “probably helped in his medical work,” said his wife, because “the brain has enormous electrical circuitry” just as machines do.
He married Janie Lewis on April 15, 1989. In addition to her, he is survived by his daughter, Kelsey Haddock of Centennial and his son, Hiram Lewis of Nashville; four grandchildren; and his brother, Stuart Cilo of Lewistown, Pa.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
