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I would like to speak about my regenexx experience.I have an injury which I needed to get fixed, and I was pursing regenexx as I believe they were one of the leaders in the field. I decided to pay the 200 dollar fee for one of their doctors to examine my chart in a sister office. I was told the procedure would cost around 4k for stem cells prior to paying the 200 dollars. I was not informed of any other fees. After paying the 200 dollars I proceeded to make an appointment. At this time, the price suddenly jumped up 1400 additional dollars for administrative fees. I also was informed I needed to pay a 150 fee to the imsc society(or something like that) for registry purposes. In the paperwork, there are also other fees that "could" result. I felt this was a bait and switch, but regardless of this, I was still interested.-----------------------
Quote from: manville on January 26, 2012, 03:02:54 AMI would like to speak about my regenexx experience.I have an injury which I needed to get fixed, and I was pursing regenexx as I believe they were one of the leaders in the field. I decided to pay the 200 dollar fee for one of their doctors to examine my chart in a sister office. I was told the procedure would cost around 4k for stem cells prior to paying the 200 dollars. I was not informed of any other fees. After paying the 200 dollars I proceeded to make an appointment. At this time, the price suddenly jumped up 1400 additional dollars for administrative fees. I also was informed I needed to pay a 150 fee to the imsc society(or something like that) for registry purposes. In the paperwork, there are also other fees that "could" result. I felt this was a bait and switch, but regardless of this, I was still interested.-----------------------This is Dr. Centeno, inventor of the Regenexx procedure. We want any patient who isn't local to our clinic or one of our network doctors to get on the phone to look at candidacy. We do this because we think the most ethical way to approach a new procedure is to make sure the patient knows where he/she stands before spending money on travel. Alternatively any patient is free just to have an in office evaluation with the physician.The fact that we and our network docs aren't orthopedic surgeons is the whole point behind Regenexx. Our goal as a group of doctors is nothing less than to create an entire new field of medicine we call interventional orthopedics-or allowing physicians to do through a needle what used to be done surgically. Regrettably your thinking that surgeons know how best to drive needles is not accurate. As an example I just spent several days in the OR with surgeons teaching them these new skills.We did begin ICMS, but at this point have dropped off all boards and that organization is pursuing it's own path without our input. If you read our book orthopedics 2.0 I think you'll get a good idea of why we want to reinvent the status quo of orthopedic care. For example the concept that the average surgeon spends much time thinking about how your muscles, nerves, and ligaments might be playing into your problem isn't something I've experienced.Regrettably the OTL piece failed in it's gatekeeper function. The media has the responsibility to make sure that the experts they put out there really know the area in which they're commenting. The tumor issue with stem cells is a good example. Embryonic Stem Cells have a known tumor problem, adult mesenchymal stem cells do not. The difference is that MSCs are contact inhibited, meaning once they cover a surface and the cells touch, they stop growing. Our procedure was also put through extensive safety studies with our practice paying for more than 200 research grade MRI's to make sure nothing like that was happening. We have published many papers in this area and continue to do so. Our cultured procedure is now at the data quality of most common orthopedic procedures being offered.On the FDA issue, we sued the agency several times over whether culturing your cells could make them a drug. We finally mutually agreed with the agency that we would stop culturing in the US until a competent court answered this question. Our case against the FDA on whether body parts can be drugs is now a landmark case that will decide how physicians use your stem cells (see http://www.regenexx.com/2011/09/are-the-stem-cells-in-your-body-drugs-an-update-on-our-battle-to-protect-physician-patient-rights/). In the meantime we sought and received the approval of the Cayman government and moved our culture operations there. Based on our published safety data we are the only advanced stem cell treatment currently approved.in the Caymans. Nothing about this battle over cultured stem cells takes from the fact that the FDA reviewed our same day procedures performed in the US and decided not to assert regulatory authority. However, you may be interested to know that they are now calling the same day fat stem cell treatments being performed in the US for orthopedic injuries the production of a drug, based on several letters sent from the tissue reference group.In summary, we work hard to do the right thing. Quality isn't inexpensive, i.e. at our Colorado and/or Cayman sites we have a state of the art clean room lab facilities, a full time lab Ph.D. working on constantly improving what we do, a full time bioengineering expert to help us create new tools to make cell therapy better, a full-time clinical research staff to make sure it really is better, and a staff of dedicated cell biologists.
