Home › Blog › Knee ACL and Arthritis Stem Cell Update

BF is a 50 year old rancher with knee arthritis and a loose ACL ligament. He came to us last year with chronic knee pain and an inability to ski, which in Colorado is sacrilege! His MRI showed a specific area of cartilage injury with a very specific bone marrow lesion (swelling in the bone due to too much force on the bone). This patient with knee arthritis and a bone marrow lesion is very similar to how we planned BF’s knee cartilage stem cell treatment. We knew from clinical experience that trying to treat his knee arthritis with stem cell injections without addressing his lax ACL ligament wouldn’t work (see our medical practice’s book on the subject-Orthopedics 2.0). So our first focus was injecting the ACL knee ligament under x-ray guidance to tighten that ligament. After we were able to make the knee more stable, we turned our attention to exact placement of the stem cells into the spot where he had lost cartilage. These were performed under a combination of ultrasound and fluoroscopic guidance. I followed this patient up yesterday, some 8 months after his Regenexx-SD procedure. BF is doing well, stating that he has little pain and was able to ski runs this past spring he’d never thought he ski again. We wish BF many more happy runs.

As we always discuss, not every patient gets results like BF.

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