A Higher Level of Care
Back to Playing the Pipes Specialist in Sports Medicine Was Just What the Doctor Ordered
H
ow do you connect sports medicine, an old 700-pound cast iron radiator and a beloved set of highland bagpipes? For Tom Parlato and Ryan Smart, MD, the fit was easy. First, comes the radiator that Parlato planned to make part of his home heating system. Parlato figures he now has one of the most expensive old cast iron radiators in existence, even though it started out as a 700-pound piece of scrap. The 47-year-old heavy equipment operation teacher at Madison-Oneida BOCES and his two teenaged sons had successfully moved the radiator down a flight of stairs and were trying to maneuver it onto a hand truck when Parlato felt something in his left arm give way. “I just felt something tear,” Parlato says as he recalls that late summer day last year. “There was some pain and immediate weakness. I knew something was
amiss, but I had a physical coming up in a few weeks, so I decided to ice it and take it easy.” As soon as she saw the arm two or three weeks later, Parlato’s family physician sent him straight to an orthopedic surgeon for diagnosis and possible treatment. Ryan Smart, MD, an orthopedic surgeon with Syracuse Orthopedic Specialists, specializes in sports medicine and diagnosed the injury as a badly torn distal biceps tendon—the tendon that connects the lower end of Parlato’s biceps muscle to the radius bone, the smaller bone in the lower arm. Without that connection, or with a badly compromised connection like Parlato’s, the arm’s major muscle has nothing to pull against and is nearly useless. Like the majority of Dr. Smart’s patients, Parlato was not an athlete, but the injuries are the same
Preparing to perform on his highland pipes, Tom Parlato rewraps his tuning pin to tighten up the pipe’s drone. Before surgery to repair a torn tendon in his arm, Parlato was unable to hold his pipes and told his surgeon, Ryan Smart, MD, before surgery that his biggest fear was that he would be unable to play. Part of the Syracuse Scottish Pipe Band, Parlato says the pipes are a passion of his.
16 caring Connection
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St. Joseph’s hospital Health Center
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Spring 2011
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www.sjhsyr.org