Home › Blog › Shoulder Arthritis and Rotator Cuff Tears

JS is a 47 year old male with a 1.5 year history of shoulder pain who due to his arthritis, labral tear, and multiple small tears in his rotator cuff tendon.  He was told he would likely need a shoulder replacement.  In our experience this is a very big surgery with relatively poor clinical outcomes, as most of the patients we’ve seen through the years have had significant pain and disability as a result of shoulder replacement.  We treated his shoulder rotator cuff and shoulder joint by re-injecting his own mesenchymal stem cells into the joint and rotator cuff under x-ray guidance.  The good news is that we appear to have saved him a surgery.  He reported significant improvement and after several rounds of treatment, he wanted to continue.  We requested a repeat MRI to make sure we were on the right track.  Dr. Schultz reviewed that MRI this week and the most striking results are above.  The before picture on top, shows the supraspinatus tendon below the yellow arrows.  The problem is that in November of 2008, the extensive light colored areas in the tendon represent swelling and tears.  The good news is that the after picture below, now shows that the rotator cuff tendon (under the yellow arrows) has much improved dark colored signal on this similar STIR MRI image.  This corresponds with his reported clinical improvement.  In addition, the bone cysts that he had in the head of his humerus, can no longer be found on the follow-up MRI.  He was cleared to continue treatment. As always, please note that not every shoulder rotator cuff patient can expect to get the same results.

This patient was treated with the Regenexx-C (cultured stem cell injections).

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