Questions to Ask at Your First Regenerative Medicine Consultation

A first consultation goes best when you steer it. Bring a short list and expect each answer to lead to a follow-up: what the clinician thinks is causing your pain, what exactly would be injected, whether it can legally be offered, what happened to people like you, who the clinic would not treat, what happens if it does not help, and the full price in writing.

Bring your imaging, your treatment history and a complete medication list. If you have not yet checked the clinic’s legal status, licenses and paperwork from home, start with the checks you can run before the visit.

What should you bring?

• Your X-ray and MRI images or the written reports, with the date each was taken
• Past injections into the area: what was injected (cortisone, hyaluronic acid, PRP or other), when, and how long any relief lasted
• Physical therapy discharge notes, or a note of how many sessions you did and whether you kept up the home program
• Any surgery on the area, with dates
• Every medicine and supplement you take, including aspirin and blood thinners, with the doctor who prescribes each
• One or two goals written down, such as walking a certain distance or sleeping through the night

The medication list matters for safety. If a clinic asks you to stop aspirin or a blood thinner before a procedure, that change has to go through the doctor who prescribed it. Mayo Clinic warns that stopping daily aspirin suddenly “may trigger a blood clot and lead to a heart attack” (Mayo Clinic).

A conversation in nine questions

This order is useful because starting with the diagnosis keeps the visit about your problem rather than the product; ending with the price keeps the price from framing everything else.

1. “What do you think is causing my pain?”
A useful answer comes after an examination and a look at your images, and names what else it could be. If the conversation moves to treatment before an examination, ask how the clinician reached the diagnosis and whether an exam would change it. If the answer is vague, follow with: “What else could it be, and how would you tell the difference?”

2. “What exactly would you inject, and where does it come from?”
You are listening for something specific: “PRP made from your blood,” or “concentrate made from bone marrow taken from your pelvis, prepared and injected in the same visit.” If you hear only “stem cells,” follow with: “From where in my body, prepared how, and is anything grown in a lab or taken from a donor?” Donor products such as umbilical cord, amniotic material or exosomes, and cells grown over days or weeks, belong in clinical trials.

3. “Is this FDA-approved for my condition? If not, what rule allows you to offer it?”
A straight answer is “It is not FDA-approved for this,” followed by a specific explanation. “FDA-registered” is not an answer: the FDA says a ClinicalTrials.gov listing or a clinic’s registration with the agency “does not mean the product is legally marketed” (FDA). If you are told it is part of a study, follow with: “What is the trial number, which ethics committee approved it, and what am I being charged?” The International Society for Stem Cell Research says “it is not customary to pay to be in a clinical trial” (<a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/611faaa8fee682525ee16489/t/65f09b1918aebc21ebd37efe/1710267161381/ISSCRPatientHandbookv12Feb2024Redesign_v4b.pdf”>ISSCR). Why a listing or registration is not approval comes down to FDA rules and what clinics can legally offer.

4. “For people with my condition and my level of damage, how many improve, and by how much?”
This is where follow-ups do the most work. Whatever number you hear, ask:

• “Compared with what?” A result compared with a placebo injection means more than one compared with how people felt before treatment.
• “Measured how?” Less pain, better function and a change in the joint itself are three different things.
• “Where does the number come from?” Published controlled trials, or the clinic’s own tracked results, with how many patients were followed, for how long, and how many stopped coming.
• “What does the research say against this?”

You can check the last answer yourself. For knee and hip arthritis, the American College of Rheumatology and Arthritis Foundation guideline recommends against stem cell and platelet-rich plasma injections (ACR). A clinician who mentions that without being asked is giving you a fuller picture than one who says there is no evidence against the treatment.

5. “Under what circumstances would you tell a patient they are not a candidate for this treatment?”
A clinic with a defined treatment boundary can name the patients it sends elsewhere, such as people with advanced arthritis it refers to a surgeon. An answer like “we can help almost anyone” tells you the clinic has not drawn that line.

6. “Who will examine me, take the sample, prepare it and give the injection?”
Ask for names and roles for each step, and the injecting physician’s specialty and board. Certificates only from groups that are neither an American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) member board nor an American Osteopathic Association board deserve a follow-up: “Who issued this, and what did it require?” You can check a Tennessee license and any disciplinary record through the state’s licensure verification search, certification by ABMS member boards at Certification Matters, and osteopathic certification through DocInfo, which the American Osteopathic Association points patients to (AOA). Not every credential carries the same weight when checking a specialist’s training.

7. “What happens on the day, and afterward?”
You want a specific harvest site and a description of what you will feel, the method used to guide the needle and why it suits your joint, a written list of which of your medicines change, with an offer to coordinate with your prescribers, and the warning signs that mean you should call, with a number answered after hours. After any joint injection, sudden severe pain, swelling, warmth, skin discoloration or fever needs a prompt call; these can be signs of a joint infection (Mayo Clinic). Those signs, and what the weeks after look like, are set out in recovering after an injection.

8. “If I have not improved by the follow-up visit, what then?”
The reassuring answer re-checks the diagnosis and says when the clinic would refer you elsewhere. If the answer is another injection, follow with: “What evidence supports a second one for someone who did not respond to the first?”

9. “What is the total price, in writing?”
Ask for an itemized quote: consultation, imaging, harvest, processing, each injection and follow-up visits. Then ask how many injections the clinic expects you will need and what each repeat costs, what you pay if your sample is not usable on the day, and what the refund policy is. On insurance, a candid answer sounds like “Probably not, but here is how to ask your insurer in writing.” The steps for getting a coverage answer from your insurer end with that answer in writing.

What should you notice about how the questions are answered?

The content of the answers matters, but so does the manner. On the way home, it helps to think back:

• Did the clinician examine you and look at your images, or did the visit go straight to a plan?
• Did anyone mention the evidence against the treatment without being asked?
• When there was no good evidence, did the clinician say so, or fill the gap with stories about other patients?
• Did you leave with a written plan and a written price?
• Were you pushed to book or pay today?
• Would you be comfortable showing this plan to your own doctor?

The sales patterns that tend to fill gaps in the evidence are among the signs that should make you leave a clinic.

Comparing two clinics afterward

Write the same answers down for each clinic, side by side.

When is it time to book, if at all?

Not on the day of the consultation. A transparent provider expects you to take the written plan home, check the physician’s license and talk it over with someone you trust. Booking makes sense only once you have clear, written answers about what will be injected and whether it can legally be offered, who will do it, and what the evidence shows for someone like you. Anything still missing can be asked for by email, and a clinic’s willingness to answer in writing is itself part of what you are judging.

This page is general information, not medical advice.