Home › Blog › Helping a Knee Arthritis Patient Avoid a High Tibial Osteotomy with Stem Cells

Can stem cells be a high tibial osteotomy alternative? AG was a 37 year old man first seen by our clinic in October of 2010. He underwent the Regenexx-AD knee procedure for knee arthritis at that time. For those that don’t know, a high tibial osteotomy (a.k.a. HTO surgery)  is a big open surgery where a wedge of bone is removed to level a joint that has been ravaged by one sided arthritis. The concept is that it will buy the patient time. The downside is that it’s a very big and invasive procedure. Rather than delving into medical details,  this is a letter we just received from him today, and while miracle is a subjective word and not all patients will experience the same result, I think it says more than I could:

“First, I would like to say a personal thank you for being so helpful and so patient with me throughout the procedures.

I went to Regenexx in early 2010 for the first time, as I was honestly running out of options. I can tell you today with 100 percent certainty that this was by far one of the best decisions I have ever made!    For someone to understand this, they must first see where I was prior.

In 2005, I suffered a meniscus tear. As a result of that, I ended up having to go through menisectomy.

Well they ended up removing half my meniscus, and guess what? I got arthritis within two years. Not only that but I started [to become] bowed legged.  The surgeon thought that tibial osteotomy would be a good idea. He said that this would help and that it might last for a maximum of ten years before having to do knee replacement surgery. I could not run or even walk for long periods of time. This meant I would have to give up my job, a career I’ve worked at for over a decade. I wouldn’t be able to support my family. I couldn’t play with my little girl the way I wanted to.

All this was going through my head when I thought I would try something that was surely too good to be true. Surely, if this procedure works my doctor would have told me about it?! I knew I was out of options and I would have to go give it a shot.  So hoping for a miracle I went to Denver..Regenexx.

The results I got were nothing short of a miracle. I now have no pain, I walk, run workout with weights as much as I want, hike etc. even as I experience this I am in disbelief and eternally grateful for having the opportunity and means to do this. For the Regenexx team I thank God everyday for guiding me to them, and I thank my wife, for supporting me throughout my journey.”

We don’t perform miracles, but we are passionate about finding new ways to help patients in pain.

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