A Winning Approach

To Lawrence Menendez, M.D., teamwork is essential. Like a quarterback leading his team down the field, Menendez directs his team of physicians with the same passion and drive. Each week he and his colleagues meet to develop the perfect strategies against musculoskeletal tumors. Their goal is to offer each patient innovative, individualized care, tailored to the patient’s wishes, as well as to the tumor’s characteristics.

“I think it’s important to spend a lot of time with the patient,” says Menendez, professor of orthopaedic surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and director of orthopaedic oncology. “The management of patients with musculoskeletal tumors is complex,” he says. “The only reason I am able to do as many cases as I do here is because I have such a strong team.”

Together, Menendez and his team make up the USC Center for Orthopaedic Oncology, which specializes in treating bone and soft tissue tumors, both malignant and benign. In addition to Menendez and his staff, the team represents a variety of other subspecialties, including pathology, medical oncology and radiation oncology. With such a broad range of subspecialties, the team is able to offer patients comprehensive diagnostic and treatment services.

"What separates us from other orthopaedic oncology centers is our innovative treatment of musculoskeletal tumors," says Menendez, who has been practicing at USC since 1985. “We offer techniques that are not available elsewhere." For example, the USC Norris Cancer Hospital is the only facility in Los Angeles with a Cyberknife, a device that treats tumors noninvasively anywhere in the body.

“The Cyberknife offers innovative ways of treating patients with very unfavorable, advanced stage cancers that could not be treated otherwise,” says Parvesh Kumar, M.D., chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology. With the help of Kumar and his staff, physicians are able to perform Cyberknife Stereotactic Radiosurgery, which precisely targets high doses of radiation to cancer cells in order to reduce the size and viability of the tumor.

“We are able to give targeted high doses of radiation to the tumor and spare the surrounding normal tissues,” Kumar says. “We have seen hardly any toxicity from the radiation, and Dr. Menendez has been able to operate on these patients successfully.”

Another advantage of Cyberknife treatment is its convenience for patients. The short courses extend over five days. Patients undergoing this form of radiation treatment have seen minimal to no side effects.

Additionally, USC physicians are the only ones on the West Coast developing techniques for the use of surgical navigation in orthopaedic oncology. Surgical navigation uses three-dimensional computer guidance to help improve the precision of the surgery. Patients benefit from the reduction of procedure duration and recovery time. The center also offers such innovative treatments as limb salvage procedures, designed to save the limb while surgically removing the tumor, and cryoablation of benign and malignant tumors, use of extreme cold to freeze and destroy tissue.

Other services provided by Menendez and his team include comprehensive management of metastatic bone tumors, the treatment of periprosthetic joint infection (following prosthetic joint replacement surgery) and complex joint reconstruction. They also offer anterior approach muscle sparing total hip replacement, surgery in which the hip joint is reached from the front of the body and muscles are pushed aside, not cut. When no muscles are cut, pain after surgery is generally reduced and recovery is quicker.

For more information or to make an appointment, visit www.doctorsofusc.com or call (800) USC-CARE.