After graduating from J.W. Nixon High School in Laredo, Texas, he attended Yale University, where he graduated in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. Cigarroa earned his medical degree in 1983 from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas with honors. During his postgraduate training, he became chief resident in General Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and completed fellowships in both Pediatric Surgery and Transplantation Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.