News Release

September 7, 2007

Contact: Christopher DeFrancesco, 860-679-3914
e-mail: cdefrancesco@uchc.edu 

UConn’s Arciero Named USA Hockey Team Physician

Sports Medicine Chief Going to Canada for 2008 World Championship

FARMINGTON, CONN. – Robert Arciero, M.D., an active team physician for the University of Connecticut basketball, football and hockey programs, will spend 16 days next spring as the head physician for Team USA in the 2008 International Ice Hockey Federation World Hockey Championship tournament.

Arciero is the chief of the sports medicine division of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the UConn Health Center’s New England Musculoskeletal Institute. He is a nationally recognized expert in the management of shoulder and knee injuries. USA Hockey selected him for the 2008 World Championship team from an exclusive group of orthopaedic sports medicine specialists in the country.

“In hockey, you have people who get their teeth broken, they get cuts and lacerations, they get concussions, knee injuries, shoulder injuries,” Arciero says. “As the team doctor, I must coordinate their care. If one of our players gets hurt, I must evaluate him and administer care. I have to make the determination whether he can continue to play, either within the game or within the tournament.”

Arciero also served as head physician for the American team that won the bronze medal in the 2004 World Hockey Championship in Prague. The 2008 tournament is in Halifax and Quebec City, May 2-18.

“USA Hockey rigidly screens and evaluates their physician coverage; only a half-dozen of about 1,800 orthopaedic sports medicine specialists in the country are even eligible for this position,” says Jay R. Lieberman, M.D., director of the New England Musculoskeletal Institute and chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the UConn Health Center. “To be chosen twice in four years to be head physician for Team USA speaks volumes about Dr. Arciero and how well-respected he is within the sports medicine community.”

Arciero is an Avon resident.

Photo: http://www.uchc.edu/ocomm/images/images_news/arciero.jpg
Caption: For the second time in four years, Robert Arciero, M.D., chief of sports medicine at the UConn Health Center, will serve as head physician for Team USA in the World Hockey Championship.

More information about USA Hockey is available at www.usahockey.com. More on the New England Musculoskeletal Institute is available at www.nemsi.uchc.edu.

The University of Connecticut Health Center includes the schools of medicine and dental medicine, the UConn Medical Group, University Dentists, and John Dempsey Hospital, a Solucient Top 100 Hospital® 2006. Founded in 1961, the Health Center pursues a mission of providing outstanding health care education in an environment of exemplary patient care, research and public service. To learn more about the UConn Health Center, visit our website at www.uchc.edu.

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