Musculoskeletal Care of the Mature Patient
I am off skiing this week in Colorado so I thought I would let my readers entertain themselves with some anecdotes from the web.
Regenexx Knee Patient Finishes the Ironman
“This 68 year old went from being told he needed a knee replacement, to successfully resuming his triathlon career with a Hawaii Ironman finish! After the Regenexx-C procedure, he was able to complete the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2 mile run. You may read more at www.regenexx.com
10 Years of Knee Pain Erased
Patient underwent the Regenexx-C procedure to deal with osteoarthritis of the knee.
“I’ve had pain in both of my knees for the last 10 years. It began when I was in the Army, and I was finding it harder and harder to do all the lifting, running and physical exercise that I needed to do. I went to the Army doctors, who told me I had osteoarthritis in both knees, but there wasn’t much I could do. Even the Army medical review board simply remarked in my record that I couldn’t do some of the physical requirements because of my knee pain, but they didn’t offer any solutions.”
“Since then, I’ve been doing lot of physical therapy, but that only helps so much. I’m not much of a medicine taker, so I usually just worked through the pain. I’d have good days and bad days, but the pain was always there.”
“We did the right knee in March 2007. I was off my feet for about an hour after each of the treatments, but that was it. No long recovery time, no time off from work – it was great. The cartilage began to grow back, and the knee was feeling much better, so we did the left knee in October. Since about two weeks later, I haven’t had any pain at all in either knee for the first time in 10 years. It’s fantastic.” You may read more at www.regenexx.com
Hip Arthritis 2 Year Stem Cell Results Update
“A 50 year old woman was treated 2 years ago for moderate hip arthritis with an injection of her own cultured stem cells. The patient at that point had bone cysts, but good cartilage remaining. Two years later she reports good relief for the past 24 months with the hip feeling much more fluid. At this point, her hip is just beginning to feel less fluid with more stiffness, so she would like an updated injection. She was very good at growing stem cells in culture (some patients aren’t as prolific a cell grower as CM), so she has cells in cryo preservation (“on ice”), which can be used for this next injection (without having to draw more cells and re-culture). CM brings up an important point in our hip data. First, hip patients tend to have less relief on average than knee arthritis patients. This will be part of an upcoming publication, but we believe this may be caused by technical issues with getting stem cells to attach to the right areas of the hip when cells are placed through injection. CM had great range of motion when she was injected (often not the case with hip arthritis patients) and as a result, we got excellent placement of cells. The second observation in our data is that hip patients have less duration of effect than knee patients. This is likely due to the reasons above. Finally, since we only have 3-4 year follow-up data on a reasonable number of patients, any or all of our patients may need re-injections at some point in the future as a stem cell “booster shot”. You may read more at
Tissue Genesis awarded joint repair grant