There are so many differences between real interventional orthopedic clinics offering stem cell treatments and those other clinics, such as the chiropractic clinics, that push amniotic stem cells, which we know are just scams. One of those major differences is candidacy grading for stem cell treatment, which we’re going to talk about today.
What Is Candidacy Grading?
Candidacy grading simply means making the determination as to whether a patient is a good, fair, or poor candidate for a procedure. In idea, it is simple. Patient’s need to know what to expect from their procedure, and the physician providing care needs to be able to provide this information based not only based on the individual patient’s specific issues and extent of his or her disease or condition, but based on all of the of data collected on those patients with similar conditions who have come before them. This is especially important in the world stem cell treatments, which is still a fairly new technology. Unfortunately, however, with many clinics out there offering orthopedic stem cell treatments, everyone is a good candidate as long as they can pay for the procedure.
Being a part of the Regenexx Network of providers and Reqenexx headquarters, the Centeno-Schultz Clinic (CSC) is very different in its approach to candidacy grading as we rely on an entire network of interventional orthopedic providers and its extensive pool of data to help us determine candidacy.
Candidacy Grading for Stem Cell Treatment via CSC, Regenexx, and the IOF
Unlike providers running those amniotic stem cell scams, the Centeno-Schultz Clinic (CSC) tracks its patients, along with all of the other Regenexx providers, in the world’s largest stem cell patient registry. This massive stem cell registry, started many years ago here at the Regenexx HQ in our clinic, is now run by the Interventional Orthopedics Foundation (IOF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to pioneering and developing interventional orthopedic medicine.
Patients who receive orthopedic stem cell treatments are entered into the registry (similar to a trauma registry or tumor registry) at the time of their procedure. Patients in the stem cell registry are tracked for ten years. Throughout this time, they are contacted at various time points and asked questions about pain, function, improvements, complications, and so on. This objective input directly from the patient is important because it provides the patients’ direct feedback on their own real-life outcomes, not, as most studies reflect, an orthopedics surgeon’s subjective view of how successful they believe the surgery they performed was.
Our CSC physicians, like all Regenexx and other interventional orthopedic physicians, have access to this extensive database to assist us with candidacy grading for all of our patients. To give you an idea of how we can use the stem cell registry data in candidacy grading, we also have a candidacy tool, for example, that determines ACL stem cell procedure candidacy based on indicators we can input using the many years of outcome data collected in the stem cell registry. Say, for example, we want to know what type of ACL tear results in the most successful results when performing our groundbreaking Perc-ACL procedure. We enter registry data from other perc-ACLR stem cell procedures into the candidacy grading tool to give us those results. This, of course, doesn’t take the place of our physicians’ own medical judgment and clinical expertise, but it is one of many tools that can help them determine a candidacy grade.
Even You Can Review Stem Cell Registry Data
It’s important to note that our registry data isn’t for our eyes only. You can also review the outcome data at any time and by body area via the Regenexx Patient Outcome Data page. This is a live and interactive site that allows you to see a variety of outcomes reported by patients, including joint function, joint pain, and overall improvement.
Every treatment, procedure, and surgery has good, fair, and poor candidates, and interventional orthopedic procedures are no different, so candidacy grading for stem cell treatment is very important. Any stem cell provider out there who tells you everyone is a good candidate for their stem cell procedure is only basing that on the patients’ ability to pay, not on their chance of successful outcomes.