LEWISTON — Central Maine Heart and Vascular Institute vascular surgeon Michael Ricci, M.D., has been appointed state air surgeon for the Vermont Air National Guard.

The state air surgeon is the top physician position in each state’s Air National Guard.

Ricci, a colonel in Air National Guard, replaces Col. Donald Majercik, the most senior flight surgeon in the Air National Guard, who retired this month after 42 years of military service.

Ricci has served as a flight surgeon with the “Green Mountain Boys” since 2003, most recently as the commander of the 158th Medical Group. He has twice deployed to Balad, Iraq, and once to Bagram, Afghanistan, where he served as a flight surgeon and a vascular and trauma surgeon in Air Force theater hospitals.

He has also deployed on several humanitarian missions, including Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and, recently, as part of a large multinational military exercise to the African nation of Senegal.

Ricci is also professor of surgery emeritus at the University of Vermont where he worked as an educator and clinical vascular surgeon for 23 years. He began his work as a vascular surgeon at Central Maine Heart and Vascular Institute in Lewiston on June 1, 2012, specializing in disease of the vascular system, including aortic aneurysms, carotid artery disease, and peripheral vascular disease.

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