R. Lor Randall, MD, FACS
Director, Sarcoma Service, Huntsman Cancer Institute
Professor, Department of Orthopaedics
The L.B. & Olive S. Young Endowed Chair for Cancer Research
R. Lor Randall, MD, FACS, is a professor in the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He holds The L.B. & Olive S. Young Endowed Chair for Cancer Research. He is an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in sarcoma treatment and director of Huntsman Cancer Institute's Sarcoma Service.
Sarcomas are an unusual group of cancers that arise from connective tissue, including bone, fat, muscle, nerve sheaths, blood vessels, tendons, and cartilage. Because these tumors can affect all ages, he treats both children and adults. The Sarcoma Service is an interdisciplinary team comprised of surgeons, radiation therapists, oncologists, pain specialists, nurse practitioners, and social workers. Among his academic responsibilities, Randall is chief of the Sarcoma Array Research Consortium (SARC) lab, a state-of-the-art facility investigating the molecular genetic mechanisms that give rise to sarcomas.
Randall also directs the metastatic bone disease program, a clinical service dedicated to developing new treatment to manage cancers that have spread from other organs to the bone. He pioneered the use of kyphoplasty, which was developed in 1998 to treat "dowager's hump," to relieve the pain of spinal compression fractures in patients with multiple myeloma and other cancers that have spread to bone. Kyphoplasty involves inserting a tiny balloon into the collapsed section of the spine and inflating it. The balloon is then removed and bone cement inserted into the open space. Randall was the first surgeon in the Intermountain West to use other minimally invasive techniques such as radiofrequency ablation to treat tumors of bone.
Randall came to Huntsman Cancer Institute in 1998 from the University of Washington, where he completed a fellowship in musculoskeletal oncology. He graduated from Yale University School of Medicine in 1992 and completed a residency in orthopaedic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. Randall's clinical and research efforts have been recognized internationally. Among his honors, he is the recipient of the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons' Musculoskeletal Tumor Society Scholar Award and has been invited as a prestigious American-British-Canadian Traveling Fellow. He is a member of several national and international oncology societies including the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, Connective Tissue Oncology Society, Musculoskeletal Tumor Society, Children's Oncology Group, and Southwest Oncology Group. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and is the author of numerous scientific manuscripts, book chapters, and abstracts in the field of sarcoma surgery and biology.
