Richard Bellucci, who died December 22, 2005, at 91, was an ear surgeon who developed microsurgical techniques and tools for the treatment of hearing loss.

Bellucci was chairman of otolaryngology at the Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital from 1963-79, and chairman of otolaryngology at New York Medical College from 1966-80.

He was best known as the inventor of the Bellucci Micro Ear Scissors, a surgical tool used in an operation he helped pioneer, the stapedectomy. The stapes – a tiny bone in the ear – is removed and replaced with a prosthetic device that allows patients with certain kinds of hearing loss to regain their hearing.

Bellucci developed the operation, which was one of the early uses of a microscope in surgery, in the late 1950s, and then helped popularize it among the medical community through teaching and a book, “Microscopic Anatomy of the Temporal Bone” (1957).

The Bellucci Micro Ear Scissors – a long instrument with an aspect of the head and bill of a snipe or curlew – were used in concert with other surgical instruments Bellucci had a hand in inventing, including drills and a wire-bending die for tympanoplasty, in which a perforated ear drum is repaired.

A devout Catholic, Bellucci spent time in recent years volunteering his services at the Hopital de Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti. Although he considered himself a “medical missionary,” Bellucci published an article in the late 1990s extolling volunteer work for a slightly more selfish reason: Haiti was a good place to practice meditation.

“Most missionary service takes place in third world countries where life is less complicated and demanding,” he wrote. “The quiet environment permits the nervous system to settle down and soon a feeling of tranquility becomes evident.”

Bellucci was raised in Pelham, and was the son of Italian immigrants. His father operated a marble quarry in Westchester County. After graduating from New York University’s Heights College, in the Bronx, he attended medical school at Creighton University in Omaha, a Catholic institution whose Jesuit instructors were to be a lifelong inspiration.

In 1942, Bellucci interned at Grasslands Hospital in Valhalla, now Westchester Medical Center, where wartime exigencies forced him to specialize in both ophthalmology and otolaryngology. Two years later, he began a residency in otolaryngology at the Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital, where he remained on staff until 1980.

A member of 23 medical societies and the author of more than 100 scientific papers, Bellucci was the recipient of many honors, including a Vatican appointment as a Master Knight of Malta and a Cavaliere de Merito of Italy, for his treatment of hearing problems in Italian World War II veterans who immigrated to America.

In an oral history he recorded in 2000, Bellucci spoke of the satisfactions that kept him working over a lengthy career. “The biggest satisfaction was to have a patient with restoration of hearing,” he said. “I walked into the ward – you know the wards of about 18 people in those days. It wasn’t separate rooms. And this woman was standing near the window, crying. I said, ‘Is something wrong?’ She says, ‘Oh, no. You know, this is the first time I can hear the rain on the windowpane.’ You know, this was an emotional thing for her, and also for me.”

Richard Bellucci
Born April 22, 1914, in Manhattan; died December 22, 2005, at Cavalry Hospital in the Bronx; survived by his wife of 55 years, Dr. Eleanor De Paoli Bellucci, a gynecologist, his daughter, Dr. Eleanor Bellucci Handler, also a gynecologist, and a grandson.