5 Famous Athletes Using Stem Cells Thereapy to Recover from Injuries

In recent years, the stem cell therapy has become more common among professional athletes who require treatment of chronic pain. We have curated stories of five athletes who have all benefited from this treatment to get them back to the top of their game.

From baseball to football, men and women suffer some of musculoskeletal injuries more severe seen today in medicine. When a professional athlete is injured, his main goal always is to return to the field as soon as possible.  The most recent news is the baseball pitcher for Los Angeles, Richard Garrett, who underwent stem cell therapy to avoid a Tommy John surgery (this is common a type of elbow surgery for ball players).

The stem cell treatments help to reverse localized lesions, and also allow regeneration of damaged cells to other tissues besides the injury, so it is an efficient alternative to avoid surgery and a long recovery term.

Rafael Nadal

According to the country of Spain: "Nadal, a treatment with cells mother, he appealed in November 2013 after exhausting the possibilities of previous treatments with platelet-rich plasma, solved you, at least for one year, knee problems. Thanks to the results, Nadal returned to use stem cells to cure his back problems, facet syndrome (inflammation of part of the lumbar vertebrae) in this case.

After extracting the stem cells, which are able to replace or regenerate damaged tissue in the bone marrow of the posterior iliac crest in the pelvis, the athlete, they infiltrated the facets joint, between the sides of the vertebral bodies".

Cristiano Ronaldo

An article of April 2016 from the British newspaper The Sun reported that Real Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo, football forward player received stem cell treatment for his injured knees. Ronaldo, 31 years old, injured his knee during a match. Initially, Real Madrid reported the injury as a cramp in the leg, but a CT scan later confirmed a break.

Ronaldo chose the same treatment with stem cells from knee that Rafael Nadal took in 2014 for a similar issue. After treatment, Nadal reported a total absence of pain in that part of his leg, something that had not experienced in more than two years prior to the therapy.

Kobe Bryant

The news that basketball legend of the Los Angeles Lakers turned to an overseas treatment to his knee became known in 2013. Bryant suffers from degeneration within the knee and has had success with treatments in the past.

Bartolo Colon

According to the New York Daily News newspaper: "the doctor who treated the Bartolo Colon (Dominican pitcher in the MLB) with stem cells in 2010, thought that he would never again throw." The procedure aroused some suspicions within baseball circles since a report in the New York Times of 2011 detailed treatment.

The bone marrow of Colon was centrifuged to separate it from the blood material and then, along with adipose tissue, was injected at the elbow and the shoulder of the pitcher to help repair the ligament damage and a tear of the rotator cuff."

C.J. Nitkowski

In 2011 the baseball C.J. Nitkowski pitcher had nothing to lose with test a treatment with stem cells in the left shoulder; in the last 10 years the left-handed reliever, had depended on this treatment to stay in the big leagues.  If he had undergone surgical intervention and long rehabilitation; This would have cut his career immediately. However, his improvement did allow him to sign with the New York Mets in 2012.

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