Home › Blog › A Severe Knee Arthritis Patient Treated with Stem Cells: Getting Back to the Stories that We Doctors Love…

This past few months I’ve had a hyper-focus on Regenexx-SD outcome data, which is information from our treatment registry. In talking to patients in that arduous process of finalizing treatment data sets, I’ve heard some great stories. For the most part what separates Regenexx from everything else out there is real world data in literally thousands of treated patients-nobody else has it nor will they ever have our depth and breath of experience in treating orthopedic patients with stem cells. For example, with an e-mail to our full time bio-statistician I can get the average patient improvement in patients with knee arthritis treated at our California Regenexx Network sites at 24 months post-procedure and if the LEFS functional score change is statistically significant. Having said that, when you focus on reporting data on hundreds or thousands of patients, you can lose sight of the individual. As physicians, thankfully, we hear patient stories of recovery everyday from individual patients, so when this came across my desk this past week, I thought I should share it exactly as I received it. This is from a severe knee arthritis stem cell patient of Dr. Handleman’s, an excellent physician on our provider network in Mill Valley:

“Ladies and gentlemen:
 
Having researched your procedure on your website and making contact with Dr. Peter Wehling in Germany, I was very pleased to find out that you had opened a clinic in Mill Valley, CA, under the direction of Dr. Handleman.  I made an appointment and was willing to give your procedure a try, as I was not ready to have a knee replacement.  For your information, I am an active 71 year old male, who has played soccer for over 60 years and I was determined to continue playing.  I had the procedure in July of last year and even Dr. Handleman was very honest with me that he could not guarantee any major improvement in my knee.   I am now pleased to report that I am back to playing soccer without major discomfort and absolutely loving the fact that at my age, I am able to participate in the sport I love.
 
With my success, I am somewhat puzzled that your website doesn’t tell more success stories like mine, as no doubt there are thousand of potential patients that would benefit from your procedure.
 
Regards
 
Karl Buder
Sonoma CA

Karl, you have a point! So to honor your request, I will start sharing more individual patient stories again in addition to reporting our treatment registry data. I’m sure Dr. Handleman will agree that hearing from patients like you makes being a physician worthwhile!

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