Home › Blog › A Grateful Knee and Shoulder Arthritis Patient

I get contacted by patients all the time and obviously see patients in follow-up. However, I don’t often have time to write about everyone that’s doing well. Hence, when they jump out at me they make it to the blog. Today’s patient is an active woman from Canada who was seen in Cayman in 2018.

Caroline’s Story

Caroline noted problems in 2012 in the gym with swelling in her knee, so she figured she had torn her meniscus. However, she was still able to play tennis so she kept going in
the gym. In 2015, she saw Dr. Fenton at our Vermont Clinic who treated her right shoulder with 4 rounds of PRP. She eventually had her bilateral knees treated with 3 rounds of PRP, which helped. Her one knee still couldn’t straighten fully nor did she have the stamina on it to play multiple rounds of tennis on multiple days. A number of years ago, she fell on her right shoulder, again it was better with PRP, but again she still had significant limitations.

Carolines’ MRIs

Her knee MRIs above showed severe arthritis on the inside of the joint and a damaged left ACL (right image).

Treatment?

Caroline was seen at our licensed, advanced stem cell treatment site in Grand Cayman. This is where we can grow the patient’s stem cells to greater numbers in order to treat many joints at once.  She had precise x-ray and ultrasound-guided injections into the damaged structures in her knees and shoulder. How did she fare? I received this email from her this week:

“I had my knees, wrist and shoulder done two years ago and right now all those joints are the best they have been in probably 8 years.  Played tennis this summer six days a week since beg of June. So glad I had the stem cells done. Planning on having all joints done again summer 2022. My left leg has completely straightened out and I have no pain anywhere right now.”

The upshot? Caroline is doing the best she’s done in years, despite arthritis in multiple joints. She’s playing tennis at a high-level and plans to get a treatment to top things off the year after next! Again, while she was a knee and shoulder replacement candidate, she avoided all of that surgery and doing what she loves!

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile