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Volker Musahl, MD, named Division Chief of Sports Medicine

November 7, 2017

Volker Musahl, MDVolker Musahl, MD has been appointed Division Chief of Sports Medicine in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Musahl is currently Medical Director of UPMC Rooney Sports Complex and also serves as Program Director for the Sports Medicine Fellowship Program. He also serves as Co-Head Team Physician for the varsity football program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Musahl initially came to the Department in 2000 as an Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Arthroskopie (AGA) Fellow and completed training as an orthopaedic surgery resident in 2008. Following a Sports Medicine/Shoulder Surgery fellowship at Cornell Medical Center in New York, he returned in 2009 as an Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012. He also holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, Swanson School of Engineering. Dr. Musahl is Board-certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery with subspecialty certification in Orthopaedic Sports Medicine.

Dr. Musahl’s research interests focus on the clinical and basic science of knee and shoulder injuries in athletes. He and Dr. Richard Debski serve as Co-Director of the Orthopaedic Robotics Laboratory, a state-of-the-art robotics laboratory which is the first of its kind in the United States. Dr. Musahl is currently Co-PI in a multi-center trial on anterior cruciate ligament surgery and research with significant funding from the Department of Defense (DOD). He served as Principal Investigator of an international multicenter trial for the study “Clinical Evaluation and Validation of Pivot Shift following ACL-R” with grant support awarded by the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine. He has been extremely successful in attracting external funding, including more than ten grants from the DOD and NIH, as well as support from foundation, industry, and other sources.

“Dr. Musahl demonstrates a strong commitment to education and continues to accept additional teaching responsibilities related to the education and training of medical students, residents, and fellows as well as athletic training students. He leads the sports medicine lecture series curriculum, mentors the clinical fellows in lectures, journal clubs, wet labs, and in the OR, and also conducts weekly shoulder research group meetings. His commitment to education is further evidenced by his mentoring of bioengineering graduate students. Since 2011, Dr. Musahl has served as Associate Team Physician for the varsity football program at the University of Pittsburgh. He also serves as the team physician for the US Soccer (U-14 boys’ national team) and Mt. Lebanon High School.

Dr. Musahl has gained an international reputation as a leader in the field of sports medicine. He is an outstanding clinician, surgeon, teacher, mentor, and researcher, and we are very fortunate to have such an exemplary member of our faculty, ” said Freddie H. Fu, MD, DSc(Hon.), DPs(Hon.), the David Silver Professor and Chairman in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.