The Interventional Orthobiologics Blog

A Conflicted Sydney Scientist and a New Knee Arthritis Stem Cell Study

I’ve documented what I and others have called “fake” PRP studies. One of the key players involved in one of those studies was David Hunter, a rheumatologist at the University of Sydney. Now David has a new study, one where he’s using stem cells to treat arthritis. Is this another fake study or a real…read more

Annual Regenexx and IOF Conference

This past weekend we had our annual Regenexx conference alongside the Interventional Orthobiologics Foundation Conference (IOF). As a result, I thought I would review today what’s up with Regenexx. Let’s dig in. Regenexx I founded Regenexx as a company in 2005. The idea was to use orthobiologics like bone marrow stem cells and platelets to…read more

Can the Fox Guard the Henhouse? Why Putting Surgeons In Charge of Reducing Surgical Rates is a Bad Idea

My mother loved her homespun idioms. One of those was that you could never put the fox in charge of the henhouse. This week a Regenexx corporate salesperson was trying to explain to a corporate client why putting a famous orthopedic clinic in charge of using interventional orthobiologics to reduce surgeries was a bad idea.…read more

What’s the Difference Between All of the Types of Stem Cell Therapy?

I’ve blogged on this topic many times in the past, but it recently came up again through a patient, so I decided to revisit it with an update. This is an incredibly confusing topic for patients as they are usually bewildered by the vastly different claims between bone marrow, fat, and birth tissue “stem cell”…read more

Helping a Competitive Teen Gymnast with Spondylolysis Avoid Surgery

For many teen athletes, their sport is their life. These days, a good number of teens come up against serious physical obstacles. This morning we’ll review a patient journey who reached back out to Dr. Jason Markle of our Colorado HQ site to update him on how she’s doing 5 years down the road. We’ll…read more

We Never Looked: Treating the Joint vs. Joint+Ligs

One of the hardest things to do in orthobiologics is to teach patients that there are major differences between what clinic A offers when it says it can perform a “PRP” injection and what clinic B offers. These two procedures may be wildly different. Today I’ll explore that concept through a medical abbreviation called “WNL”. …read more

Masking, COVID, and a New Cochrane Study

Our pandemic response was a dismal failure. No single issue shows that more than the idea that wearing a mask would decrease the spread of this disease. Now a new Cochrane analysis shows us how futile this was and also highlights how our public health leaders failed to follow the science. Masking Pre-COVID For anyone…read more

What is Slipping Rib Syndrome?

Many patients have rib pain, but this often goes undiagnosed. Today we’ll explore why and get into “Slipping Rib Syndrome” as well as the concept of rib instability. Let’s dig in. The Typical Patient While many different patients can have pain in the upper back or chest due to a wide variety of things, slipping…read more