ping ~ J ~ the article on Calandruccio ~OT

Sorry, it's long...



A New Way to Treat Tennis Elbow




(I took my byline out here)





The walls of Dr. James Calandruccio’s personal office at Baptist Desoto
Hospital in Southaven, where he has an extension of his Memphis practice
with Campbell’s Clinic, are covered in handprints.

Each is made by patients and coworkers, signed and dated.

Calandruccio, better known as “Dr. Cal” by his patients, has a
knack at making them feel more like friends than just people with
orthopaedic problems.

He also has a knack at developing new ways to make them feel
better.

Patients who suffer from tennis elbow especially benefit from a
procedure developed by Calandruccio--autologous blood injection. Doctors for
years have used therapy, steroid and cortisone injection or surgery to help
these patients.

Calandruccio instead injects the patient’s blood into the area
of the torn tendon. He says that all elements of healing are in the blood
and that the concept just seemed logical.

“I have injected 30 patients with their own blood, and 86 percent of them
have continued to have long-lasting relief versus 50 percent of the
cortisone injected patients,” said Calandruccio.

The blood injection is administered during an office visit after the patient
is examined and injection is indicated, and it is less expensive than a
cortisone shot. He said, “Blood injection is a shot at helping the tissues
heal.”

The only other use for blood injection that Dr. Cal said he’s aware of is to
patch spinal block leaks. “When someone is given a spinal injection and the
spinal fluid leaks out, patients will lose their shock absorber effect of
the spinal fluid and get tremendous headaches,” he explained.

He added that benefits from cortisone injection usually fade out in three
months. “The cortisone keeps the area from healing and the tendon continues
to tear,” he said. He advises to use cortisone injection only after all else
has failed. “That is my last ditch effort,” he said, “because cortisone
injection does not promote healing.”

Calandruccio summed up the sequence of treatment for tennis elbow: rest,
splint, anti-inflammatory meds, physical therapy, blood injection, cortisone
injection and finally surgery.

Although Calandruccio does not favor using cortisone injection for tennis
elbow, he says that cortisone can be given in any area of the body that
hurts. “I use it especially for intra-articular (inside the joint) disorders
of the shoulder, wrist, fingers, thumb, knee and ankle as well as some
extra-articular (outside the joint) disorders including bursitis of the
shoulder, knee and hip.” He said that injection into the heel for plantar
fasciitis (heel spur) is common but the long-term results are not great. “I
believe that most physicians give cortisone shots for this problem as
another hopeful measure to avoid surgery.”

What does this information mean to you if you are injured? “My
information means for you that if injuries need blood to heal, they need
immobilization, growth factors and well-established circulation. Unhealthy
tissues take a long time to heal and some require operative intervention.
The concept behind the blood injection is to instill an injury and let the
healing response continue. One must note that this form of treatment is for
a narrow range of disorders. Most people with tennis elbow, for example,
that I see have been treated a long time and have had a number of steroid
injections and often they are out of the window of healing potential. Each
patient needs individual treatment. The blood injection is not a quick fix;
it is the initiation of the healing response.”

Calandruccio will present this procedure in Hawaii at the
combined American and Japanese Hand Society meeting in March. He is also a
member of the Kiros Research Society, a group of hand surgeons nationwide.
They meet annually and in 1993 traveled to Santo Domingo and the Dominican
Republic to teach academic local orthopaedic surgeons there and to do
complex hand and upper extremity surgeries as well.

But Calandruccio wasn’t always the successful surgeon traveling
around the world curing orthopaedic ailments.

After finishing two years at Vanderbilt University he worked as
an automobile mechanic at Lou Wood’s Foreign Car Repair Shop on Bellevue in
Memphis.

“After I graduated, my parents told me that I had to get a job,”
said Calandruccio with a grin. He had prior knowledge about automobile
mechanics because he built his first car, a 1951 Austin that he drove to
Central High School where he attended.

His interest in car repair began when he was 15 and collected
scrap metal from vacant lots to sell. He discovered the Austin, minus a
motor, but when he found out that he could only get ten dollars for it, he
decided to fix it up for himself. “I found another Austin just like it at a
junk yard and used it for the motor and other parts,” he said.

Calandruccio said that this was the car he drove to Nashville
when he started to college. “It took me eight hours to get there. I had two
flat tires and a broken fan belt.” He worked on his car while it was jacked
up on the highway with his mother, Betty, sitting in it. “After I fixed the
fan belt, I had to roll the tires to service stations along the way because
I had no spares.”

Although he still has the car, he’s now too busy to repair it again. Most of
his time is spent in surgery and seeing patients or at home on his
woodworking projects.

When he was a youngster, he made a cigar box for his father, Rocco
Calandruccio. The inscription on the brass shield of the box read, To Dad
from Jim--1973. “My dad liked to tinker in our basement on various projects,
so I got into doing the same.”

Calandruccio progressed from cigar boxes to furniture, carvings and
construction trim work. He is presently working on additions to his home.

He attended graduate school at the University of Memphis where
he graduated with a master’s degree in Biochemistry. “I started working in
surgery at Baptist Central and liked it so much that I entered Medical
School at the University of Tennessee in 1981.” Calandruccio’s father, who
is also an orthopaedic surgeon, was a positive influence on his son’s
decision.