Knee Stem Cell Injections help a Mountaineer/Photographer return to Chasing Ice

knee stem cell

Can knee stem cell injections keep a professional mountaineer who needs a knee replacement stay in the field without major surgery? Jim Balog is the kind of unique and gifted person you can meet in the unique city of Boulder, Colorado. He’s a mountaineer who also happened to be a photographer who used those two skills to form the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), a non-profit which works to record the changes to our warming world.  If you come to our practice through Denver International, you’ll see Jim’s work up on the screens in the airport. EIS specializes in placing time lapse cameras in very extreme and hard to reach parts of the globe. I first took a look at Jim’s knee in the spring of 2009, more than 3 years ago. At that point he had just returned from Antarctica placing more cameras and his knee had swollen severely. He was planning a summer trip back to the arctic and was concerned that he wouldn’t make it. His MRI showed right sided medial compartment arthritis with partial to full thickness cartilage loss. At first we patched him together by getting rid of trigger points in his quadriceps and injecting hyaluronic acid. In November/December of 2009 and February of 2010 Jim returned for a series of Regenexx-C procedures. He’s since had a few SCP update injections in his patellar tendon that we’ve fit in here and there as Jim travels the world lecturing on EIS. Jim recently sent me the above trailer for a film about his work called “Chasing Ice”. In the end credits he gave me a very kind plug about how we used his own stem cells to allow him to keep climbing and stay in the field for his important work. Click on the image above to see more of this riveting work.

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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

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NOTE: This blog post provides general information to help the reader better understand regenerative medicine, musculoskeletal health, and related subjects. All content provided in this blog, website, or any linked materials, including text, graphics, images, patient profiles, outcomes, and information, are not intended and should not be considered or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please always consult with a professional and certified healthcare provider to discuss if a treatment is right for you.

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