Home › Blog › More Low Back Regenexx-PL Disc Procedure Successes

Treating low back pain with surgery has become very interesting these days with many news stories about the failures of surgical fusion. We prefer to treat these patients without lumbar surgery if possible. The Regenexx-PL Disc Procedure is a good example of how we accomplish that using a different approach, to try and help patients both avoid low back surgery and stay away from the high dose steroids (which can have side effects) often used in low back epidural steroid injections. RB is a good example. He is a 43 year old athletic male with a greater than 1 year history of low back pain and leg symptoms into the foot. His MRI showed disc bulges at multiple levels, the worst low back disc bulge at L5-S1 where he also had foraminal stenosis (the size of the place where the L5 spinal nerves exit was smaller due to bone spurs) impinging the exiting L5 nerve roots. He had tried and failed conservative care and wanted to avoid low back surgery, so he agreed to try the Regenexx-PL Disc procedure. He came in for a simple IV blood draw and underwent 3 x-ray guided epidurals with platelet lysate (different from PRP-a solution where the platelets are cracked open to get all of the growth factors out). He reported 70% improvement in low back and leg pain and commented, “I can actually feel my socks now!” (before procedure he had very little feeling in his feet). He still has some remaining pain likely stemming from the SI joint, which is being worked up by Dr. Schultz.

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