Venkatakrishna Rajajee, M.B.B.S.

Dr. Venkatakrishna Rajajee completed his medical training at the Madras Medical College in India followed by residency training in Neurology at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York in 2003, and fellowships in Stroke/ Vascular Neurology and Neurological Critical Care at the UCLA Medical Center 2003-2005. In addition, he has several years of experience in private practice as an attending physician in medical/ surgical intensive care units. He joined the University of Michigan’s neurosurgery department 2008 as faculty neurointensivist and vascular neurologist. He has served as the medical director of neurocritical care since 2014 and as co-director of the comprehensive stroke center since 2017.

Dr. Rajajee has had a clinical, educational, and research interest in critical care ultrasound since 2007. He is a diplomate of the National Board of Echocardiography. He has published several articles on optic nerve ultrasound and transcranial doppler in neurocritical care, and helped pioneer the use of real-time ultrasound guidance during bedside tracheostomy in 2011. Dr. Rajajee developed and directed the Neurocritical Care Society’s (NCS) annual critical care ultrasound workshop between 2012-2014, and has served on the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s (SCCM) Ultrasound Committee. He currently coordinates Michigan Medicine’s critical care ultrasound curriculum.

His other interests include the monitoring and management of patients with severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). In 2013, Michigan Medicine signed a memorandum of understanding on collaboration in research and education with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, with TBI as a major focus. As part of this collaboration, Dr. Rajajee has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study techniques of intracranial pressure assessment applicable to low and middle income nations. He is also a co-investigator on a study funded by the Department of Defense (DoD) evaluating noninvasive techniques to assess the brain following TBI. He is the author of UpToDate’s topic reviews on the management and epidemiology of TBI.

Dr. Rajajee has served on several national committees, including the NCS annual meeting committee, NCS physician accreditation certification and training (PACT) committee and the SCCM multidisciplinary critical care knowledge assessment program (MCCKAP) committee. He was co-chair of the Emergency Neurological Life Support (ENLS) airway, ventilation, and sedation protocol subcommittee 2016-2020. In recognition of his contributions, Dr. Rajajee has received multiple presidential citations from the neurocritical care society.

He is currently co-chair of the Neurocritical Care Society’s Guidelines Committee.