What Advice Do You Have For Selecting A Stem Cell Therapy Center?

As you are considering which stem cell therapy center to choose, first, you should find out if the center has a qualified physician who will perform your therapy. You can inquire with the State Board of Medical Examiners to see if that physician is credentialed to provide stem cell therapy in that state. You can also find out if that physician is board-certified in regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy by checking with the Metabolic Medical Institute or the American Academy of Antiaging and Regenerative Medicine. Certification by these organizations helps ensure the physician has basic background knowledge in human stem cells, federal regulations, and the ethical and legal application of cellular therapy throughout the entire range of human diseases.

Advanced training is offered by the American Academy of Orthopedic Medicine and the Interventional Orthopedic Foundation. You should ask to see certificates for all the intermediate and advanced training courses. They should have advanced training, at least in your problem area. Only then should you consider selecting that center.

The highest-quality stem cell therapy will also offer you the best chance of a successful outcome for your care. You’ll want to find a highly qualified physician who uses your own live, healthy stem cells and provides you with a count of nucleated stem cells that concentrate from your bone marrow. They must perform your injections using precision-guiding tools like ultrasound and fluoroscopy.

You may find unscrupulous physicians, chiropractors, or naturopaths who are using birth tissue products in their stem cell therapy. These products come from donated umbilical cord blood, Wharton's jelly, placenta, or amniotic fluid, and they do not contain live-functioning cells even though they are passed off as stem cell therapy. Avoid these scams, and find an FDA-compliant stem cell center that uses your own live, healthy stem cells for your therapy.

While your orthopedic surgeon or general physician may offer stem cell therapy in their practice instead of referring you to a specialist, you should find out more about their process for extracting stem cells. Often, they may draw 10 or 15 ml of your bone marrow, put it in a capsule, spin it for 20 minutes, draw up a sample that they cannot count, and inject it without precision guidance tools.

A better procedure – and one that may improve your outcome more – should include a large, 35 ml, or more sample of your bone marrow that undergoes lab processing for no less than two hours. Your stem cell therapy physician should give you a count of the number of nucleated stem cells isolated from your marrow, and you should look for a count of at least 400 million nucleated cells. In addition, if your physician is injecting your stem cells based on feeling your joint structure and looking at the anatomy, your injections may not be delivered to the right place. The injections should be precision-guided using ultrasound and fluoroscopy to get those stem cells exactly where they need to be.

At Regenesis Stem Cell Center, Dr. Charles Lee – who is board-certified in anesthesiology, regenerative medicine, and stem cell therapies – will use your own fresh live stem cells harvested from your bone marrow for your procedure. We gently extract your marrow sample on-site and process it in our specialized lab for two hours. At the end of the processing, we provide you with a count of the nucleated stem cells isolated from your sample. We require at least 400 million nucleated cells for our injections, but we often see a billion to a billion and a half nucleated stem cells after our processing. Dr. Lee then injects your own healthy stem cells along with platelet-rich plasma exactly where it needs to be using ultrasound and fluoroscopy guidance. Precision-guided injections make it possible to deliver your stem cells into your joints, ligaments, tendons, bone, aponeurosis, or even around entrapped nerves. At Regenesis, our stem cell therapy procedures are the state-of-the-art available in the United States today.