How to build a sports medicine program—gridiron of western Pennsylvania—a Pitt orthopaedic tradition

Excerpt

During the 1970’s, Dr. Pierce Scranton (an orthopaedic surgeon at UPMC, at the time) was asked by his neighbor, the superintendent of Keystone Oaks High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to provide medical care for their football team. This marked the beginning of a longstanding relationship between UPMC Sports Medicine and high school football in western Pennsylvania. Dr. Scranton asked one of UPMC’s orthopaedic surgery residents at that time, Dr. Freddie Fu, to help care for these young athletes. In 1982, Mount Lebanon High School contacted UPMC’s orthopaedic surgery chairman at that time, Dr. Albert Ferguson, with a similar request for an orthopaedic physician to be their football team doctor. Dr. Ferguson embraced this opportunity and urged Dr. Fu to take it. He did, and during the first game that he covered, a player suffered a violent injury near the goal line, fracturing his femur. With scarce medical resources, Dr. Fu had to hold the young man’s leg in alignment for 30 minutes while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. …