Eric Mowatt-Larssen, MD, FACPh, RPhS profile

Eric started out his career life as a Navy SEAL platoon commander, training and leading sixteen SEALs on missions in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.  After getting out of the Navy, he attended medical school at the Medical College of Virginia, and then residency in emergency medicine at Geisinger Medical Center in Pennsylvania. He was certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine and became Director of Emergency Medicine at Culpeper Regional Hospital in Virginia.

Eric became interested in phlebology because of a family history of varicose veins affecting two of the most important people in his life – his mother and his uncle.  His uncle is a renowned World War II Norwegian resistance fighter and outdoorsman and entrepreneur – and a major role model. Both Eric’s mother and uncle had vein stripping back in the 1960s and experienced a lot of postoperative pain. Eric started training under Dr. Craig Feied, former president of the American College of Phlebology, working particularly closely with nurse practitioner Joyce Jackson.  He was certified by the American Board of Venous and Lymphatic Medicine in 2008 and CCI (Registered Phlebology Sonographer) in 2010, both on the first ever exams.

In 2009 Eric joined the Duke Vein Clinic, working in the Department of Vascular Surgery as an Assistant Professor of Surgery. He treated vein patients, trained Vascular Surgery and Interventional Radiology fellows, and did vein research. With colleagues from Duke he edited the textbook Phlebology, Vein Surgery and Ultrasonography, published in 2014 by Springer Publishing.  He has had multiple articles published and given many lectures regarding vein disease to national and international medical audiences.

Eric left Duke in 2012, lured by the mountains, ocean, and private practice opportunities in Monterey, California.  He is now in solo physician practice.  “Ultrasound is the eyes and ears of a vein specialist, essential in diagnosis, treatment and evaluation of treatment results. Treating vein patients without good ultrasound is like flying blind and deaf,” Eric says. Last year he seized the opportunity to do humanitarian vein treatments in Nicaragua at the Fara Clinic with his wife and two sons and several international colleagues led by Dr. Nick Morrison.

When he is not practicing medicine, Eric can be found, predictably, in the ocean or the mountains. He especially loves surfing and hiking with his family. Afterwards he might play guitar songs and tell stories.