Regenexx Des Moines
Blog
common shoulder surgery carries unwelcome side effects
Old shoulder-surgery habits die hard, despite numerous reports of unwelcome side effects. A study published in the January 2016 Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery has shown that adding an acromioplasty surgery to a surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff appears to...
supraspinatus tears and stem cells—clinical trial returns jiu jitsu competitor to the podium
Multiple clinical trials currently are underway at Regenexx, with the aim of critically examining techniques and sharing regenerative medicine outcomes with the scientific community. One of these trials is aimed at evaluating the success of injections of bone-marrow...
from chronic knee pain to Ironman—a Regenexx patient’s stem-cell story
The term “iron man” can call to mind either the classic character made popular in comic books and the movies or a super-fit person who rides, swims, and runs for hours on end. Michelle is the latter. Like many of us, she...
Regenexx doctors publish research on determining correct stem-cell dosage
Dose is a key issue in medicine, yet for same-day stem-cell treatments nobody seems to know the correct dose nor have a way to measure it so that it can be adjusted to help patients. A newly published Regenexx research paper begins to answer some of these critical...
CoQ10 supplement may ease inflammation due to arthritis
Can CoQ10 help arthritis? Co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is a supplement that most people associate with protection from heart disease. A study published September 2, 2015, by Archives of Medical Research suggests that it may help in inflammatory arthritis. In particular, in a...
what’s the benefit of stem cells for arthritis if not structural repair?
Patients often are led to believe that a stem-cell injection used to treat moderate to severe knee osteoarthritis has the expectation of growing large amounts of new cartilage. This usually is not the case, but despite this many patients get prolonged relief. To...
hip pain may result from pain that originates in the back
Hip-replacement rates have been sky-rocketing in the past 10 years. Many patients who have gotten their hip replaced still have hip pain. How is that possible? The orthopedic surgeon never checked the lower back as a possible cause of hip pain. Now a new study...
positive results from largest knee osteoarthritis stem-cell treatment study to date
Regenexx, a nationwide network of doctors specializing in regenerative medicine and advanced interventional orthopedic techniques, announced the results of a peer-reviewed research study of 840 patients treated for knee osteoarthritis. All patients were treated using...
can a precise stem-cell injection help you avoid shoulder surgery?
Todd is a middle-aged man who tore his rotator cuff when lifting weights and was told he needed surgery to repair the tear. Todd chose to avoid the knife and instead got his own stem cells precisely injected into the tear using sophisticated imaging guidance. The...
another study shows PRP effective in treating Achilles tendon
We’ve been using platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to successfully treat tendon injuries for many years. A study reported in the February 16, 2015, issue of Lancet medical journal is interesting as it combined an in vitro study and an in vivo human study to test the...
not all stem-cell procedures are synonymous with snake oil
On September 2, 2015, a highly syndicated USA Today article appeared that was critical of NFL stem-cell treatments and the athletes who seek these cures. The article leaves one with the impression that stem cells used to treat orthopedic problems are some sort of...
diabetes drugs cause severe joint pain
Diabetes and osteoarthritis have long been bedfellows. Statistically, people who have been diagnosed with diabetes have twice the likelihood of developing osteoarthritis. The FDA recently issued an urgent warning that diabetics taking a whole class of diabetic...
amniotic stem-cell scam
One of the most pervasive scams sweeping the nation today involves “amniotic stem-cell therapy.” Aggressive entrepreneurs are selling doctors what they claim are frozen vials of amniotic stem cells. In actuality, the vials contain dead tissue. Amniotic fluid comes...
osteoarthritis pain is all about the nerves
Yet another study proves—yet again—that osteoarthritis pain is not related to structure. At issue here is the orthopedic paradigm that pain is related to structure; that MRI findings like meniscus tears and cartilage damage associated with osteoarthritis are the cause...
what if hip surgery doesn’t work because the hip pain wasn’t caused by the hip?
The concept that hip labrum tears cause pain is relatively new in medicine. Despite that, the number of arthroscopic hip surgeries to treat hip labrum tears and impingement have exploded in the past five years. Have physicians become too zealous? A patient I evaluated...
does minimally invasive spine surgery really have a zero percent chance of making you worse?
A patient recently reported to her Regenexx doctor that she had spoken to people at a clinic called “North American Spine” and had been told that there was zero percent chance of her getting worse after a minimally invasive surgical procedure. That the clinic refused...
polyethylene hip-replacement devices linked to fewer stem cells
Beginning in the 1970s, doctors started putting all sorts of stuff into our bodies—pacemakers, valves, stents, artificial joints, etc. These were hailed as modern medical miracles when they first appeared on the scene, but what if the stuff they were made of is toxic...
how diabetes increases risk of bone fracture
Though previously under-estimated, the pervasive impact of blood sugar on multiple body systems has finally become the subject of many studies. In a study published July 13, 2015, by the medical journal Bone, researches looked at the bone’s ability to heal in the...