Anthony T. Carter, MD, FAAOS
Hampton Roads Orthopaedics Spine and Sports Medicine, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
More than 25 years after serving in the Air Force, Dr. Anthony Carter still draws daily on the lessons and skills he mastered as a young military physician.
Now a prominent orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Carter grew as both a doctor and a person during his three years of service at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton and a three-month deployment to Egypt at the very start of his medical career.
“You’re thrust into situations that are totally foreign to you, so you have to learn how to be part of a team, how to be organized and efficient, and how to be a good leader,” he says. “You also learn to appreciate your family and everything you have in your life.”
A Massachusetts native, Dr. Carter joined the Air Force after his first year at Boston University School of Medicine to cover tuition without taking out loans. That saved his parents, both already working two jobs, from having to refinance their home.
Throughout his medical education, Dr. Carter did summer training rotations at various Air Force installations. He completed an internship in General Surgery and a residency in Orthopaedics at New York University/Bellevue Medical Center, with a year as Chief Resident.
In September 1992, Dr. Carter was assigned to Langley’s hospital as a staff orthopaedic surgeon. Three months later – and with just two days’ notice – he was deployed with an Air Transportable Hospital in support of Operation Restore Hope, a mission to deliver humanitarian aid in war-torn Somalia.
After a 14-hour flight on a military cargo plane, the team set up a large tent city near Cairo in two days, complete with two operating rooms. They expected to care for wounded soldiers sent from Somalia on their way to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
“We were ready to do anything, right there in the middle of the desert,” Dr. Carter relates. “It was remarkable.”
In the end, the situation in Somalia deescalated and Dr. Carter handled mainly minor injuries such as sprains and strains, plus an emergency appendectomy and an excision of a wrist ganglion cyst.
Dr. Carter’s years at Langley, however, were an entirely different story. Working under an ex-fighter pilot who had served in Vietnam, he stayed busy with a huge variety of orthopaedic cases. Those ranged from acute injuries and fractures among young active-duty patients to joint replacements and arthritis in military retirees.
“It was the best kind of training, really similar to a high-quality fellowship,” he says. “It gave me a lot of confidence, and my wife and I also fell in love with Virginia.”
Dr. Carter left the Air Force in 1995 and joined Hampton Roads Orthopaedics Spine and Sports Medicine, where he has practiced ever since. His two grown children and two grandchildren – soon to be three – have also settled in the area.
Over the years, Dr. Carter has pioneered multiple new techniques in orthopaedics, including a direct anterior approach to total hip replacement, robotic knee surgery, improved pain management techniques, and accelerated recovery protocols.
The Chief of Surgery and Orthopaedics at Mary Immaculate Hospital, Dr. Carter has lectured and taught nationwide and overseas, authored a book chapter on total hip replacement, peer-reviewed numerous journal articles, and regularly won awards as a top local surgeon.
The military contributed to all of those accomplishments, he believes: “It feels good to serve your country, and I got much more out of it than I ever expected. I wouldn’t trade my Air Force experiences for anything.”