Dr. Gazmuri obtained his medical degree from the University of Chile, where he also completed his internal medicine residency. He practiced critical care medicine for two years and then traveled to the United States in 1986 for a research fellowship at Chicago Medical School/Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science under the mentorship of late Professor Max Harry Weil, MD, PhD (one of the founding fathers of critical care medicine and an internationally renowned clinician-scientist in the field of circulatory shock and cardiac arrest). Dr. Gazmuri devoted three years as a full-time research fellow and five additional years as a critical care fellow, PhD student, and faculty under Dr. Weil’s mentorship. In 1994, he earned a PhD degree in Physiology & Biophysics from Rosalind Franklin University and in 1997, he was inducted Fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine.

Currently, Dr. Gazmuri is a professor (tenure-track) of medicine in the Department of Clinical Sciences (primary appointment) and of physiology and biophysics in the Department of Foundational Sciences and Humanities (secondary appointment). He is also director of the Resuscitation Institute at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. At the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (FHCC), Dr. Gazmuri is the Section Chief of Critical Care Medicine and ICU Director. He is the former Chair of the CPR Committee and he pioneered the development of the institution’s Rapid Response System.

In 1995, Dr. Gazmuri established a small research laboratory aided by a start-up fund from the Chicago Medical School. In 1998 and in 2001, he obtained funding through two consecutive VA Merit Review grants and in 2002 he obtained funding through the NIH. These grants, in addition to funding from the pharmaceutical industry and private foundations, allowed him to develop a research team and expand his research laboratory, eventually transferring the research laboratory to Rosalind Franklin University. In 2010, he obtained research grants from the Department of Defense and the VA Merit Review system. He also gained recognition from the university, which supported the establishment of the Resuscitation Institute, where Dr. Gazmuri serves as director conducting work centered on the role of mitochondria for resuscitation from cardiac arrest and other low-flow states. Dr. Gazmuri has also served as principal investigator at FHCC in several multicenter industry-sponsored clinical trials.

Outside the university, Dr. Gazmuri has served as a member of the Advanced Cardiac Life Support Subcommittee of the American Heart Association and the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation, involved in the development of CPR Guidelines. He also served as a member of the Clinical and Integrative Cardiovascular Science Study Section of the Center for Scientific Review at the NIH, involved in the review of national grant applications. He is currently a member of the organizing committee of the Resuscitation Science Symposium at the American Heart Association.

Dr. Gazmuri proposed and chaired a consensus statement that was simultaneously published in Circulation and Resuscitation in 2007, titled “Scientific knowledge gaps and clinical research priorities for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiovascular care identified during the 2005 International Consensus Conference on ECC and CPR science with treatment recommendations: a consensus statement from the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation."

He has published extensively in the field of resuscitation and critical care medicine, and he has given lectures at national and international scientific events.

Publications

Dr. Gazmuri has contributed to the field of resuscitation and critical care medicine with more than 180 publications, including book chapters, original peer-reviewed publications, consensus statements, guidelines, case reports, review articles, proceedings, letters to the editor, and editorials. He has received – as primary and senior author – multiple awards at annual scientific meetings sponsored by the American Heart Association and the Society of Critical Care Medicine.

The publications listed below reflect distinct aspects of his work, including collaboration with colleagues in Slovenia¹, a review on his main research work in resuscitation², a study that challenges current recommendations on ventilation during CPR³, recent work in hemorrhagic shock supported by the Department of Defense⁴, and the discovery of a novel function of cyclophilin-D⁵.

1. Grmec S, Strnad M, Kupnik D, Sinkovič A, Gazmuri RJ. Erythropoietin facilitates the return of spontaneous circulation and survival in victims of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Resuscitation 2009;80:631–7 (PMID: 19371997).
2. Gazmuri RJ, Radhakrishnan J. Protecting mitochondrial bioenergetic function during resuscitation from cardiac arrest. Crit Care Clin 2012;28:245-70. PMID:22433486; PMCID:PMC3310365 (Available on 2013/4/1).
3. Gazmuri RJ, Ayoub IM, Radhakrishnan J, Motl J, Upadhyaya MP. Clinically plausible hyperventilation does not exert adverse hemodynamic effects during CPR but markedly reduces end-tidal PCO2. Resuscitation 2012;83:259-264 (PMID: 21854734).
4. Gazmuri RJ, Whitehouse K, Whittinghill K, Baetiong A, Radhakrishnan J. Vasopressin infusion with small-volume fluid resuscitation during hemorrhagic shock promotes hemodynamic stability and survival in swine. PLOS ONE 2015 2015 Jun 24;10(6):e0130134. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130134. eCollection 2015.
5. Radhakrishnan J, Bazarek S, Chandran B, Gazmuri RJ. Cyclophilin-D: a resident regulator of mitochondrial gene expression. FASEB J 2015;Jul;29(7):2734-48. doi: 10.1096/fj.14-263855. Epub 2015 Apr 2.

A complete list of Dr. Gazmuri's publications is available at My Bibliography (maintained by the US National Library of Medicine).