Dr. Rege received a BS of Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA in 1971 and his MD from The Milton S. Hershey Medical School, Pennsylvania State University in Hershey, PA in 1975. Following medical school, he remained at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center for his first year of residency in General Surgery, and then served 2-years as a general medical officer in the US Navy. He returned to Hershey in 1978 and completed his Residency in Surgery in 1982.
After an additional year of training in gastrointestinal research at Northwestern University Medical School, he remained on the faculty at Northwestern. During 15-years at Northwestern, he rose through the academic ranks to the level of Tenured Professor of Surgery, assumed the position of Chief of Surgical Services at the VA Chicago Medical Center, Lakeside Division, and established a busy general surgery practice with an emphasis on complex hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery.
In recent years, Dr. Rege has been a leader in development of advanced laparoscopic surgery, including laparoscopic hernia repair, Nissen fundoplication, esophagomyotomy, colectomy and splenectomy. With the Division of Transplantation Surgery at Northwestern University, he developed the first successful laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy program in the Midwest and taught one of the transplant surgeons the technique. The program now functions independently and harvests more than 100 kidneys each year.
He was recruited to UT Southwestern and appointed Professor and Chairman of the Division of Gastrointestinal and Endocrine Surgery in July 1998. In addition, Dr. Rege maintained an active basic research program to study the pathogenesis of gallstones, which has been continuously funded via external sources since its inception in 1983.
In April 2001, Dr. Rege was named Chairman of the Department of Surgery and became The Hall and Mary Lucille Shannon Distinguished Professor.
