Dr. Aldo O. Perotto, formerly of Springs, a respected physiatrist who specialized in electrodiagnosis for over 40 years, died of complications of dementia on April 1 in Los Angeles. He was 93.
Dr. Perotto, who was from Argentina, received his medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1958 and trained in pediatrics and pediatric surgery at hospitals in that city. He moved to New York in 1964 in search of greater professional opportunities and retrained in the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation.
He was licensed to practice medicine in New York State in 1967, and joined the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City. For 27 years, he was a full-time attending physician in the rehabilitation department at the Bronx Municipal Hospital Center, the major clinical affiliate and teaching site for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
He was director of the department of rehabilitation at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx in the 1970s, and in the 1980s was the clinical director in that department at Jacobi Hospital, also in the Bronx.
“His greatest professional satisfaction was in his role as a teacher,” according to his family. He served as an associate professor in physical medicine and rehabilitation and was director of residency training in the department of rehabilitation medicine at Albert Einstein from 1985 to 1994. “He took pride in his ability to impart knowledge of the specialty to younger generations of physiatrists and was known to his students as a patient and dedicated instructor.” He also served as a guest examiner for the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Board on a number of occasions.
Through the course of his career, Dr. Perotto was a member of various medical academies, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and participated in medical conferences around the world, often as a speaker on his specialty, electromyography.
“His most lasting contribution to the profession,” according to his family, was the book he coauthored in 1975 with his mentor, Dr. Edward Delagi, and two Albert Einstein College of Medicine colleagues, “Anatomical Guide for the Electromyographer,” which “became a standard reference tool and training aid in the field of electromyography, and over the course of almost 40 years, Dr. Perotto revised and expanded subsequent versions of the book.” It is now in its fifth edition and has been translated into several languages.
Born in Argentina on Jan. 26, 1932, to Antonio Perotto and the former Rosa Barberis, Dr. Perotto grew up in Buenos Aires. He married Rosa Magdalena Sanchez in 1960. The couple emigrated to New York with their two children in 1964. She died in 1979. In 1985, he remarried and moved to Westchester County with his second wife, Phyllis Baker Hammond, a sculptor.
They bought a summer house in Springs in 1987, and following his retirement in 1995 built a new house overlooking Accabonac Harbor. He moved here full time in 2000 “and enjoyed a long and happy retirement,” his family wrote. “An avid fisherman, he marveled at the natural beauty throughout the region and especially enjoyed watching the moon rise over Gerard Drive, with the moonlight shimmering across the waters of the Accabonac. He spent many happy afternoons on the waters of Gardiner’s Bay with his longtime colleague and friend, Ed Delagi,” who had lived in Springs since the 1960s.
Dr. Perotto and his wife moved to Los Angeles in 2022 to be closer to family. She died in October.
He is survived by a son, Oscar Perotto, his wife, Sylvia, and their two children, all of Switzerland, by a daughter, Claudia Mason of Seattle, and by a stepdaughter, Sharon Weller of Los Angeles.
A private memorial service will be held in Buenos Aires.
