Home › Blog › Radial Tear of the Inside Knee Meniscus

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GO is 51 year old who fell from a ladder and when we first met him last summer he had a 3 month history of right knee pain.  His MRI showed a radial tear of the medial meniscus measuring 4 mm by 6 mm and he seemed to have pain associated with that tear.  He didn’t want arthroscopic knee surgery because he was concerned about recent research showing that arthroscopic surgery may not be effective for this problem.  The reason may be that chopping out parts of the meniscus may lead to more joint arthritis through extra forces on the joint surfaces (i.e. less meniscus cushion=more pressure on cartilage surfaces).  Rather than a knee surgery, we injected his own cultured stem cells into the tear under imaging guidance.  He’s now about a year out from his injection and this is what he wrote us today:

-100% pain relief from medial meniscus procedure

-Patient quote: “This procedure needs to be expanded across the world. I know of friends that are still having knee surgery because there insurance will not pay for this procedure. I think once insurance companies find out the stem cell procedure is less money and better for the patients they will be happy pay for this.  Like most stuff I’m sure surgery will still be needed in some situations but stem cells will soon be the leading treatment for most joint injuries.   I plan to have my wife get treated with this stem cell procedure. I have recommend this treatment to many friends and anyone else that will listen. “I now have become addicted to medical information and medical procedures and plan to go back to school to get into the medical field. This stem cell procedure made me feel hole again and this is something I want to help others feel.  I thank God for foresight of Dr. Schultz to setup the Regenexx company and for the work done by the Regenexx company.

Congratulations to Dr. Schultz for his great work on this patient.  It’s always great to hear this kind of feedback.  As always, it’s important to note that we can’t heal all meniscus tears and there are times that the procedure will fail and the patient will need to have the meniscus surgically treated.

(Please note, this patient was treated with the Regenexx-C cultured stem cell procedure and not Regenexx-SD.  While Regenexx-SD does rely on the same stem cell type that was used to treat these patients and other clinics have reported good results using similar procedures that don’t rely on stem cell culturing, Regenexx-SD clinical effectiveness has not yet been established. In addition, not all patients treated with Regenexx-C would be expected to get these same results.)

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