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Repeating the second grade due to reading difficulties, a large class size and an overwhelmed teacher put a fire in the belly of Mark Shaw.

“After that year, I felt I needed to prove to myself that I could succeed academically,” admitted Shaw, a noted Nashville neuroradiologist who recently opened his own practice, Cool Springs Interventional, a diagnostic and therapeutic interventional radiology clinic located in Franklin’s Aspen Grove neighborhood.

Shaw also had early influences that pointed him in the direction of a medical career. His father, Loren Shaw, was a medical technologist, head of hematology, and his uncle, to whom he was close, was a radiologist.

“I became interested in the sciences and medicine in particular,” explained Shaw. “I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to be right out of high school, but I did know I liked the medical field.”

Shaw enrolled in a radiologic technology school, however soon realized he needed more challenge and responsibility. Shaw moved on to Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. to complete his undergraduate degree and pre-medicine requirements while working weekends as a radiologic technologist.

“During medical school, I loved radiology and it was certainly a field that I was most familiar and comfortable with,” he said. “In residency, the chairman, a neuroradiologist, demonstrated such a zest for the specialty that it was contagious. Following my neuroradiology fellowship at Vanderbilt, I became more and more interested in neurointerventional procedures to help relieve patients’ back and radicular pain.”

Shaw credits growing up in Iowa, the middle of three sons born to Loren and Carol, a Christian education director, as fertile ground that helped instill in him Midwestern values and a strong work ethic. (His brothers also excelled. Scott is an engineer living in Brentwood, Tenn., and Kelly is a political science professor in Iowa.)

Early on, Shaw had a knack for overcoming adversity and bettering himself in the process. For example, after being sidelined by a knee injury, he became an athletic trainer while a student at Indianola High School, where he was very active in sports and music. At Creighton University, he was the third year class president in medical school.

After completing a radiology residency at the University of Louisville, where he served as chief resident, Shaw became board-certified in diagnostic radiology with the American Board of Radiology. He then completed a neuroradiology fellowship at Vanderbilt University.

After working in private practice for nine years, six of which were with Radiology Alliance, primarily working from Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville, Shaw founded Cool Springs Interventional. The practice was conceived, he noted, to give expert and efficient outpatient medical care offering diagnostic and therapeutic radiologic medical procedures. In particular, he wanted to make sure the scheduling process was tailored “to provide service with expediency.”

“Starting my own practice has been one of my greatest life challenges,” admitted Shaw of making the plunge into entrepreneurship. “I wanted more control of my daily schedule, to be able to spend more time with the patient and their procedure, not to be pressured to perform faster than I feel comfortable with.

“It’s still very much a work in progress, but I have to give most of the credit to my wife, Cindy, who encouraged me to reach for my dream. She is the business side of the practice, with degrees in computer science and a MBA.”

Named for the corridor - Cool Springs Boulevard - on which the new practice is located, and shortened to CSI (“love the Miami show,” he noted, with a chuckle), Shaw made certain to incorporate high-tech equipment to better provide a host of diagnostic and therapeutic radiologic medical procedures.

Known for his expertise in thoracic and lumbar vertebroplasty, Shaw has more vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty experience to repair vertebral compression fractures (VCFs) than any other Tennessee physician. Even though some medical professionals endorse the newer kyphoplasty procedure to repair VCFs, Shaw prefers vertebroplasty, which was developed in the early 1990s as a minimally invasive method to fix VCFs by injecting cement into the fracture to strengthen the bone.

“Vertebroplasty has over a 95 percent success rate and less than 1 percent complication rate,” emphasized Shaw. “It’s the most rewarding procedure I do to help reduce patients’ pain. VCFs can result in a downward spiral for the elderly patient, often times resulting in the loss of independent living and increased morbidity.”

Shaw also performs cervical, thoracic and lumbar epidural steroid injections, transforaminal nerve root blocks, lumbar discograms, facet joint injections, and myelograms, as well as venous access procedures such as PICC and port placements.

Multi-talented and creative, Shaw would likely have pursued a career as a photographer with National Geographic if the medical profession had not worked out. “I enjoy photography and would love to travel the world,”

admitted Shaw, who loves seeking out new venues and adventures. Last spring on a sailing trip in the Virgin Islands, he earned American Sailing Association certifications in the basics of sailing. “I want to learn more about that,” he enthused. Shaw, an avid diver, is also certified in SCUBA.

In his spare time, he can be found designing and creating stained-glass windows and doors in his workshop at his Brentwood home, where he lives with his wife of 18 years and their two teenagers, Nathan, 16, and Jon, 13, and a cat, Sunny. To clear his mind and seek inspiration, he embraces long walks with his collie, Sassy.



April 2008

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