Dr. Kerrigan grew up in Manasquan, where he was a first-team All-State, All-Shore Conference, and All-Monmouth County football player before going on to play at Columbia University. He earned his degree in neuroscience at Columbia and his medical degree at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He completed his orthopaedic surgery residency at Rutgers Health Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, training across the full breadth of orthopaedic surgery, with rotations at Jersey Shore University Medical Center and University Hospital in Newark and five months of pediatric orthopaedics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He came back to Monmouth County after fellowship to care for the community he was raised in.
Spine care is unusual within orthopaedics in that no two patients are alike. Two people can have nearly identical imaging and still need entirely different treatment, because their symptoms, their anatomy, and their goals are not the same. Dr. Kerrigan starts with listening and a careful physical exam. From there he walks each patient through what is actually happening in their spine, lays out every reasonable option, including the option of not operating, and works with them to decide which path fits. Most patients with neck and back pain never need surgery, and he will tell you plainly when you are one of them.
That approach is why he chose the fellowship he did. At OrthoCarolina Spine Center he trained under eight fellowship-trained spine surgeons spanning the full range of surgical approaches, deliberately learning many techniques rather than specializing narrowly in one. A surgeon who knows one operation well tends to recommend it. Dr. Kerrigan trained so that the operation could be chosen to fit the patient rather than the other way around.
His particular focus is anterior and lateral access to the lumbar spine, the ALIF and LLIF approaches that reach the disc from the front or the side rather than through the back muscles. Working from these angles lets him restore collapsed disc height and spinal alignment directly. He also performs cervical disc replacement for patients whose anatomy allows a disc to be replaced rather than fused, preserving motion at that level. He treats the full range of spinal conditions, from herniated discs, sciatica, and spinal stenosis through spondylolisthesis, deformity, and revision surgery for patients whose prior operations have not held up. His research on interbody implant geometry in anterior retroperitoneal lumbar fusion was presented at the AO Spine North America Fellows Forum, and he has published on outcomes in cervical spine surgery and on the evidence behind insurance coverage for cervical disc replacement.
Dr. Kerrigan operates at Monmouth Medical Center and Jersey Shore University Medical Center and sees patients at the Shrewsbury office, including evening and weekend appointments. New patients are typically seen within a few days.
