The above pictures represent pictures of an MRI scan from one of our patients.  What we are looking at are pictures of a knee (both front ways and sideways views).  The bottom four pictures are from an MRI scan in 2008.  At that time our patient was in severe pain on the inside (medial) portion of his knee.  He was able to walk only with crutches.  In the bottom four pictures the second and fourth pictures going from left to right show significant problems.  In these two pictures we see areas of a white color.  This white color on the MRI scan represents dead and dying bone.  This condition is called avascular necrosis of the bone.   Perhaps a simplistic way of looking at this is to consider this condition similar to a heart attack of the bone.  There are many different causes of avascular necrosis such as cortisone usage, scuba diving but by far the most common cause is idiopathic or unknown etiology.  In this case the cause was idiopathic.   The patient sought a number of opinions.   He was told by two separate orthopedic physicians that he needed a knee replacement.  We now have a patient in his 40’s, previously very active and having a well-paying job that required him to be active but he was having great difficulty doing these things.   One thing this patient did not want was a total knee replacement at his young age. 

Not responding to conservative measures (of which there are very few for this condition), the patient was facing a knee replacement.  The patient than sought a consult from our clinic.  The patient was told we thought there was a good chance we could arrest the process and possibly reverse it. He felt he had little to lose by trying our techniques.  He was told that our techniques were unique and not the same as other clinics using stem cells and or PRP.  Our approaches are unique in all facets of the patient’s treatment including that time before, during, and after treatments.  We began treatments in Dec. of 2008.  The patient received 3 treatments total from us.  He became progressively better, gave up his crutches and resumed full duty work within 2 months.  He became progressively better until he became totally asymptomatic a few months later.   He did not follow up with us until Sept. of 2011.  At that time he twisted his knee playing tennis. He now plays tennis 5 days a week.  I suspected he might have torn a cartilage and ordered an MRI scan.  The top four pictures represent the new MRI scan from Sept. 2011 (Remember look at the second and fourth pictures where the arrows are). What we see in this scan is that the white area of the bone has completely resolved.  His MRI scan is completely normal.  He was back playing tennis within a week of seeing us.

    This case shows one of the most visually impressive MRI pictures I have ever seen in the field regenerative medicine.  What we can also take from this case is that we obviously had more than enough stem cells to accomplish the repair negating the need to try to artificially increase the number of stem cells.  Secondly, we have shown that the patient’s own stem cells did the job.  Even more surprisingly is the fact that we have refined our techniques since 2008 and added other treatments such as electrical stimulation.   As time goes on we will be showing more cases which demonstrate our healing of orthopedic conditions with very dramatic evidence that will be evident to the lay person.  This case is currently being submitted to a number of journals for publication.   

Dr. P