Home › Blog › What Constitutes a Real Orthobiologics Spine Treatment?

There are a huge number of clinics out there claiming to offer advanced orthobiologics spine treatment. However, most of these clinics aren’t doing that, but instead injecting ligaments and muscle trigger points. Why would someone get this kind of simple treatment and not get all of the other myriad structures in their spine that can cause pain injected? Mostly this happens because patients don’t know.

In this infographic, you can see that truly advanced spine treatment uses both fluoroscopy and ultrasound to guide the needles to the proper spot. The sites that can cause pain and can be injected using that guidance include:

• Ligaments
• Muscles
• Tendons
• Facet Joints
• Epidural (around nerves)
• Discs

Also, realize that the training difference between injecting muscles and ligaments and injecting a facet joint or epidural using x-ray guidance and contrast confirmation is MASSIVE. Meaning that someone can be taught to inject muscles and ligaments in a weekend course, but extensive training taking years is required to master injections into specific spinal structures using imaging guidance.

Please share this infographic with your family and friends, as most patients who are getting these spine procedures with PRP or stem cells never get a complete treatment. This is because they don’t know the difference.

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