Two Angels pitchers underwent bone marrow stem cell therapy to try to avoid Tommy John surgery. Garrett Richards and Andrew Heaney received injections two weeks apart, and now they wait to see if they can pitch again with a healed ligament. This procedure is experimental, and Dr. Larry Goldstein of the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center at UC San Diego cautions about the anecdotal stories of success:
When players such as Richards and Heaney are injected with concentrated bone marrow, stem cells are among a range of cells in the mixture, in addition to proteins, rather than a pure mixture of stem cells.
“You don’t actually know it’s the stem cells that are making the changes,” Goldstein said. “It could be some other active ingredient in the cell preparation.”
Then there’s the role a player’s rehab plays.
“You never know with athletes,” Goldstein said. “They have the best medical care in the world. They’re fanatics about working out and following rehab. How do they know they got better than they would have without the treatment? It’s just total speculation.”
If there continues to be success with the combination of injections and rehabilitation, the medical community will have a good reason to tease out what is working and try maybe lessen the need for surgery on partially torn ligaments.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/28YMius
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