James Barrow loves to play golf.
But a year and a half ago, he couldn't lift his right arm higher than this. An accident severed tendons in his shoulder, making even simple things seem impossible.
"One of the physicians I saw early on told me there was nothing they could do. Golf game...disappeared."
Sports Medicine Specialist Doctor Spero Karas developed a new procedure to fix these massive tears using a surgically-placed cadaver tissue graft to replace and reattach the defective tendon.
"We sew the graft into the patient's native rotator cuff and use that graft to bridge the defect over to the bone and then we reattach the graft to the bone."
Doctors say early studies show this experimental graft-to-bone technique is a safe and effective repair.
A year after surgery, James feels like a success story every time he picks up a club.
