This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
The Doctor is in
Professional athletes call on Dr. Bertram Zarins ‘63 to get them back in the game
By Rebecca Rhodin
The fame, fortunes, skills, and egos of professional athletes don’t impress Dr. Bertram Zarins ‘63 as much as one habit the pros share—they follow a doctor’s orders.
“They’re just people, they’re variable, like anyone else,” says Zarins of the athletes he treats on the New England Patriots, Boston Bruins, and New England Revolution soccer team. “But they’re motivated and very cooperative. They want to get back in the game.”
An A.B. chemistry graduate, orthopedist Zarins has built a career on knees and shoulders, with a professional life that has roughly paralleled the development of sports medicine as a field and arthroscopy as a groundbreaking surgery for such injuries.
He is now chief of sports medicine at Massachusetts GeneralHospital and an associate clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at HarvardMedicalSchool. Highlights of an exciting career include service as head physician for the U.S. team at the Sarajevo XIV Winter Olympics in 1984 and a chance to “perform” surgery by a telephone hookup with the South Pole.
Although he played soccer at Lafayette, Zarins isn’t a sports fanatic, attributing his interest in sports medicine possibly to time spent treating injuries at a ski resort and in the Navy on Guam. In addition, he had a fellowship in sports medicine with Dr. Carter Rowe, a legendary orthopedic surgeon who became his mentor, he says.
“Many of the treatments have changed dramatically from the time when I joined Dr. Rowe,” he says. “I was an early person doing arthroscopy and operating on knees. Some athletes from the Boston area came to me. Many were Patriots, so I joined them.”
A native of Latvia who immigrated here in 1946, Zarins says he wanted to be a doctor since attending StuyvesantHigh School in New York City, because “I liked the humanity aspect, helping people, but also liked the science of it.”
He received his medical degree from State University of New York’s UpstateMedicalCenter in Syracuse in 1967, completing an internship and assistant residency in general surgery at the JohnsHopkinsHospital in Baltimore.
The method of operating transformed from opening the joint, which was both imprecise and could cause other problems, to arthroscopic surgery, now a standard practice that uses a small scope with a television camera to investigate and fix problems, he says.
Pursuing orthopedics has led to some spectacular experiences for Zarins, including serving at the Sarajevo Olympics, which he calls “a mind-boggling, once-in-lifetime experience.”
He marched in with the athletes in the opening ceremonies, but as he describes it, much of the medical work was more down-to-earth—overseeing other doctors, drug-testing, and covering various events in case of injury. In one case, a ski jumper crashed.
More recently, in June 2002, Zarins played a role in repairing the
damaged knee of a meteorologist spending the winter in Antarctica through a telephone hookup from Boston.
Using the connection operated by Raytheon Polar Services Co. of Colorado, Zarins and anesthesiologist Dr. Vicki Modest helped South Pole physician Timothy Pollard suture a damaged tendon in the knee of Dar Gibson, a Raytheon employee who was injured in a fall.
“I watched what he was doing. It was easy! I could just sit and talk,” says Zarins, who typically spends three days a week in surgery, and two days seeing patients.
He has also sought to help doctors in his native Latvia, where he has organized medical conferences for a country that the Soviet occupation left with primitive medical care.
Though his resume is chock-full of accomplishments, committee memberships, and awards reflecting years of hard work, today “a lot of that’s behind me,” he says, because he now has a family and different priorities—”watching my boys grow.”
Married to Laima, whose career is just beginning as a resident in internal medicine at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., Zarins no longer only treats sports injuries, but teaches sports to his own sons, ages 10 and 12. The family enjoys boating and sailing in the summertime and skiing in winter.
“I put the kids on the school bus at 7:30 and go to work at 7:45, getting home around 7 p.m.,” he says. “Living on Beacon Hill in Boston, close to the hospital, helps.”
He estimates that he will work at least another 10 years until his boys go to college, “hopefully Lafayette.” For, although his many accomplishments, that’s where Zarins believes it all began for him.
“I really feel that without Lafayette, I wouldn’t have gotten that start. It really sent me off in the right direction, and I’m very grateful,” he says. “Lafayette was a very eye-opening, wonderful experience. I left as a person with better social skills that paid off for the rest of my life.”