Retinitis pigmentosa is the name given to a group of genetic, usually hereditary, disorders of the retina. (The retina is the part of the eye that converts light to nerve impulses.) About one in 3500 people suffer from retinitis pigmentosa throughout the world. It is a progressive disease ending in tunnel vision or complete blindness and for which there is no known cure.
In adults, stem cells are created in the bone marrow and then distributed to the rest of the body through the blood system. It stands to reason that stem cells might be harvested from either location, but there is an important difference both in quantity and in quality between the stem cells found at the source and those found on the periphery of the body.
Luis Romero Guerra, M.D., the president of the ProgenCell ethics committee, and Norma Niño Sulkowska, M.D., ProgenCell’s staff ophthalmologist, were invited by Tijuana Innovadora to present “Vanguard of Medicine: Stem Cells in Ophthalmology” on 16 October 2012. By way of introduction, they were praised as stem cell pioneers by Patricia Aubanel, M.D., the cardiologist who achieved international recognition when she saved Mother Teresa’s life with an experimental stent.
Barely twelve months ago, the University of California San Diego opened their $127,000,000 stem cell research center to a blitz of media hoopla. And yet, just a few miles down the road, ProgenCell had already spent more than a decade quietly bringing stem cells to patients who need them. What might explain such a contrast?
The German word for “hospital” gives us the unvarnished truth: Krankenhaus, the place where sick people dwell. Its very purpose is to collect up every sort of medical problem and let them stew together. You will find more germs and viruses and bacteria there than you will on a city street, which is why hospital administrators are at pains to sanitize as much as they can.
One of the usual complications of diabetes is the breakdown of the blood vessels that feed the retina, which is the part of the eye that processes images. Retinopathy occurs when blood leaks out of those vessels into the eye, causing blurred vision and ultimately blindness. Eighty percent of all patients who have suffered from diabetes for ten years develop diabetic retinopathy as a consequence.
Over the twelve years that we have been helping people with stem cell therapy in Tijuana, we have noticed an interesting phenomenon in our patients’ recoveries. With every treatment, the patient’s bone marrow produces more stem cells than it did the time before.
For the first treatment, we have measured an average of 8,520,000 units per milliliter.
As a major part of our commitment to total quality management and ISO9000 procedures, we have been developing ways to measure customer satisfaction. We do this in order to understand our patients better. Since we’re in the wellness business, success usually means that we don’t see our patient again, so we use what we learn while our patients are with us so that the experiences of our next patients can be even better.
Many people have told us that going beyond their hometown for medical attention puts them out of their comfort zone. They don’t know what to expect, especially in a foreign country, so they naturally expect the worst – beginning with all the “don’t drink the water” stories.
We at ProgenCell would like to put everyone’s minds at ease.