Stem Cell Therapy Overseas

Stem cell therapy is already available overseas, with a number of patients travelling to countries such as China, Mexico, Germany, and Panama to receive stem cell transplants. There are, however, a number of issues to be considered when looking at such a treatment as many of these countries have quite lax regulations governing medical treatments, including issues of hygiene and sterility, as well as accountability for the treatments performed. As such, patients travelling from the US to foreign clinics for stem cell therapy are likely to invalidate their own health insurance and may be putting themselves at risk of infection, exploitation, and complications including undesirable effects like tumor growth or haemorrhage following treatment.

Safety Concerns at Overseas Stem Cell Clinics

The lack of transparency at many clinics, a focus on profits rather than patient care, and the relative inexperience of staff who are often not medically trained exposes the patient to a number of potential risks. These overseas stem cell clinics often promote themselves to vulnerable patients desperate for a cure and frustrated with the slow progress of stem cell research in the US. Now that legislation preventing federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research has been somewhat relaxed, there is likely to be rapid progress in the development of new interventions utilizing stem cell therapy and patient are encouraged to avoid unnecessarily dangerous trips overseas and keep their focus on the possibility of taking part in free clinical trials at home instead.

Pinning All Hope on Stem Cells

Stem cell therapy is an exciting area of medicine that holds much promise, and the recent improvements in understanding of how stem cells behave, where they are located, and how they may, potentially, be influenced for use in specific diseases conditions offers hope for patients with few, if any, other options for a cure. There is a danger however of rushing ahead and making stem cell treatments available without fully understanding the consequences which is why long-term clinical trials are so important. Just as with the development of new drugs, there is a good deal of evidence regarding their activity that only comes to light after many thousands of patients have taken these medications following FDA approval but which never emerged during clinical trials. Stem cell therapy is extremely unlikely to constitute the medical miracle that many hold it up to be, and is, instead, just one of many exciting strategies in disease prevention and treatment currently under investigation.

How to Get Free Stem Cell Therapy

Patients interested in the potential for stem cell therapy to alleviate their condition should discuss the issue with their doctor who could help locate a clinical trial for which they may be eligible. Checking at clinicaltrials.gov is also a good idea for interested patients and patient advocacy groups; it is also worth approaching local university hospitals to find out if any researchers are working on stem cell therapy trials there. It is also important to bear in mind that overseas stem cell clinics may close suddenly and unexpectedly like the XCell Center in Germany, leaving patients in limbo.