Regenerative therapies for pain are often a buzz word in vogue today for experimental unproven therapies offered by charlatans for a great amount of money.  This is especially true with "stem cell" treatments, words they bandy about as though these therapies are cure-alls for every malady known to man.  Stem cell therapies may eventually have a place in medicine, but at this time their role remains undefined since we have so few evidences of effectiveness and increasing numbers of disastrous consequences from misapplied therapies.  In Tampa, there are now three individuals that are permanently blind from fat derived stem cell therapies over the past year, and the Florida legislature is examining control mechanisms to keep these doctor flim-flam artists from ever performing this kind of therapy again.  There are exactly zero studies as of this date showing stem cell therapies are useful for macular degeneration, yet these continue to be offered by the profiteering doctors at great cost to line their own pockets.  In part, some of the tragic outcomes are seen because of the injection of effectively cellular garbage into people.  99% of what is being injected derived from the patient's own fat are not stem cells, but are cell fragments, fat, fibrous tissue, fibroblasts, and other components that have no useful purpose.  Useful stem cells derived from bone marrow are less than 1/10,000 of the cells being injected, since most of what is being injected are hematopoetic stem cells (make blood cells) and bone fragments.  Both of these stem cell types are being touted as stem cells when in fact only a very small fraction is really stem cells, since they are not being purified.  Additionally there were many people fleeced by orthopedic surgeons and other doctors who would do "stem cell injections" into the shoulders and knees.  These stem cells came through the mail and had been freeze dried, meaning 100% of the stem cells were dead.  This did not dissuade surgeons from both advertising and telling patients they were receiving stem cells even though the stem cells they injected could not possibly have any effect since they were dead. Tens of thousands of patients have been given these injections by surgeons that were either too uneducated to know what they were injecting, or simply did not care. Similarly, platelet rich plasma (PRP) was touted by some doctors as being stem cell injections but PRP has zero stem cells.  So patients are naively getting these treatments based only on hope, trusting their doctors would not lead them astray, but there is nothing further from the truth.  When a doctor can make $10,000 profit off of each of a steady stream of patients there is just too much financial incentive to continue practicing shoddy medicine.  

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There are stem cell treatments derived from umbilical and amniotic sources that are much more pure and may be used on patients with much less risk than the current fat or bone marrow derived stem cells.  However, the sources must guarantee the stem cells are alive and viable.  Also, they should be limited to uses where there is scientific evidence of effectiveness and safety.  Algos offers only these types of treatments and at a small fraction of the price charged by other doctors since our price is based on our hourly fee plus the cost of the stem cells.  Similarly, we offer PRP at a small fraction of the cost of other doctors.  Finally we offer proliferative therapy at a significant discount.  These are all explained below.

 

STEM CELLS  Read more about our stem cells here.

Algos uses umbilical and amniotic stem cells that are much more pure than the bone marrow and fat derived stem cell harvests.  The latter two techniques involve placement of long painful needles all the way across the abdomen or into the bone marrow of the iliac crest while the patient is awake.  

Umbilical stem cells are derived from the umbilical cord of newborn babies.  These cells are not allergenic (do not invoke an allergic immune response) and therefore may be harvested, purified, collected in a laboratory dedicated to that purpose, then shipped throughout the US.  Our cost of the stem cells (for 6 million) is $700.  We therefore offer stem cell injections for $800 in the office- a cost that is half that of most other physicians. The knee is the area with the greatest amount of research on stem cells and this is certainly true for umbilical stem cells.  Using a combination stem cell and hyaluronic acid gel, one study followed patients for 7 years with significant improvement and regrowth of cartilage after stem cell injections (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28191757).  

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PRP   Read more about our PRP here. 

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PROLOTHERAPY  Read more about our prolotherapy here. 

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