Home › Blog › Helping a Firefighter Keep Kicking!

Many of our patients have a similar story. They’re active people, often pursuing a dream that requires them to be active, and then one or more injuries catch up with them and their dream is placed on hold. They do their research and soon learn that traditional orthopedic surgical procedures aren’t the answer, so they go looking for surgical alternatives and find us. Josh is a good example of an active guy with a dream who was being held back by injury, but who was able to push through with the help of various Regenexx procedures.

Josh is a 34-year-old firefighter who had knee pain and neck pain. He first injured his knee, approximately three years ago, but that resolved fairly quickly. However, when getting into jiu-jitsu in February of 2014, he began having increasing knee pain with catching and popping. The pain was severe enough to prevent him from performing jiu-jitsu, so he tried physical therapy, but the issue remained. Josh began having neck pain again in March after a year and a half of lower level pain at the back of his shoulder blade. When jiu-jitsu really flared it up, he had numbness and tingling radiating into his thumb and second finger. P.T., massage, and chiropractic only helped temporarily. His neck MRI showed a disc bulge pressing on the C6 nerve and his knee MRI showed meniscus tears, some early arthritis, and a bone marrow lesion.

So what did we do? Surgery to remove the disc and parts of the meniscus? Nope, both would be a dumb idea setting him up for more arthritis and problems down the road. In his case, we injected his lax MCL, ACL, and torn meniscus with ultra-precise injections of his own super concentrated platelet rich plasma (SCP Procedure) and treated his neck with the PL-Disc procedure as a neck surgery alternative.  His result? This is the e-mail and picture he sent (pic above):

“I just wanted to take a minute to thank you and everyone else at Centeno Shultz for doing what you do. With my cervical disc herniation and my torn meniscus I didn’t think I would be able to continue working as a firefighter or continue to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai boxing. Since the first procedure I have improved greatly and have been able to train and perform both at work and in the gym. This week I was awarded my blue belt, I never thought I would reach that goal. Thank you!”

The upshot? We’re grateful that we could help Josh get his blue belt and continue to save lives as a firefighter! We’re also proud to say that this is what we love to do-help aging athletes with injuries keep moving without invasive and life changing surgery!

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