Dr. Amit Lahav is a successful orthopedic surgeon with a private practice in Milford, an accomplished drummer, and the host of Health Care on the Hill, a monthly medical talk show on cable television. The hip and knee joint replacement specialist was named Physician of the Year for in 2011.
Not bad for an ‘under-achiever’ at a Queens, New York high school. Teachers feared him and some classmates thought he would never amount to much, largely because they were judging a book by its cover.
“I had hair down to here,” Lahav said, marking the middle of his upper arm, “and I wore a leather jacket.”
Still, he excelled at high school -- maintaining a 4.0 grade point average and finishing ninth in a class of 713 students -- and earned a degree in electrical engineering before heading to medical school.
Throughout his academic career, hard rock and heavy metal music blared on his stereo. It still does, even in his operating room. “People think it’s loud and aggressive but it relaxes me,” said Lahav, who has multiple professional recordings and plays in a rock band comprising other physicians, who perform for fund-raisers related to their profession.
He’s the hip doctor, literally, said one of the staff at , the practice he shares with partners Dr. Tedd Weisman and Dr. Aaron Schachter at 849 Boston Post Road.
Lahav takes pride in “putting people back together and giving them functionality and quality of life. My patients matter to me,” said Lahav, who admits to visiting some home-bound patients.
Shortly after Lahav arrived in Milford, where he resides with his wife and three children, an operating room nurse gave him the ultimate compliment for a surgeon. “He’s got good hands,” the nurse told her friend Margie Allen, the office manager at Orthopedic Health.
“His patients love him, love him, love him,” Allen said emphatically. “We’re just lucky to have him in Milford; I know that,” she said.
Lahav feels equally grateful. The “jeans and T-shirt” guy who rarely wears a tie and never dons a physician’s typical white coat, enjoys visiting his patients at the hospital and running into them at and the local grocery stores.
“I’m just like every other guy. I’m a regular guy,” Lahav said.
He wear his hair short these days but when he wants to let his hair down, so to speak, he heads to the basement to play his drums.
