Chico Escuela posted:I'm up for learning more if you have some links to share, but everything I read says that moving from the petri dish to successful human therapies is still quite a ways off. There are clinics out there offering stem cell therapies--and making some extravagant--and unproven--claims about their treatments, but FDA has tried to close many of them down. (https://www.fda.gov/forconsume...pdates/ucm286155.htm )
It wouldn't surprise me if there are pitchers who are paying docs to try this; but right now they are essentially participating in unregulated experiments.
Again, if you have links to other takes, I'm interested. Not in promotional literature by for-profit stem-cell clinics, but in any actual studies you know of.
https://www.mlb.com/news/angel...-therapy/c-180441542
"On May 2 [2016], Steve H. Yoon, a physician at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in Southern California, extracted stem cells from Andrew Heaney's bone marrow and injected them into the damaged ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. Fourteen days later, Yoon did the same with Garrett Richards.
Yoon estimates that he has performed stem-cell procedures on 15 to 20 Major League pitchers and that "less than 50 percent" ultimately needed Tommy John surgery
Dr. David Crane, who specializes in regenerative therapy for Blue Tail Medical Group in the Midwest, said he has done about 50 of these stem-cell procedures since 2004, the vast majority of them for pitchers in high school and college. About five were Major Leaguers, and Crane said only one wound up needing Tommy John surgery. He claims to have a 90-percent success rate overall, but he is also picky with the patients he chooses.
Said Crane: "If it's a partial tear, and they still have the healing potential, and the stem cells from bone marrow are good, it's a useful tool."
https://www.mlb.com/news/angel...-therapy/c-180441542
Stem-cell therapy is poised to disrupt the Tommy John epidemic in baseball