The honest version of what a treatment day looks like, the hour you leave home, the lane at the border, the floor your suite is on, who hands you what, how you get back. Written so you can plan it yourself, or hand the page to someone who's planning it for you.
A representative treatment day for an IV longevity infusion. Joint and complex cases run about 60 to 90 minutes longer because of imaging, a procedure room, and a longer monitored rest after the direct injection. Discharge is authorized by the attending physician, not a fixed schedule; your coordinator sends a tailored itinerary the week prior. The morning runs close to the clock; the afternoon flexes, so the later steps are a guide, not a stopwatch.
San Diego hotel lobby or SAN airport curb, whichever your plan calls for.
About 20 minutes from downtown San Diego or the airport. There is typically no stop on the way down.
5 to 10 minutes across the border to the hospital. You enter through the main lobby on Paseo de los Héroes; intake is pre-completed, so you're walked straight upstairs to your suite without waiting.
Nurse + physician both present.
Runs approximately 45 minutes. The dose did not appear at ten o'clock: it was brought up from cryostorage well before you arrived and prepared under tightly controlled conditions, every handling parameter watched and the cell count and viability re-confirmed, before the lab cleared it to your suite. That preparation is the most exacting step of the morning, and it is done slowly, on purpose. You're reclined, connected to a continuous monitor; a physician is on the floor the entire time.
The physician monitors your condition, while a barista from the on-site café keeps cappuccinos and lattes coming, with a cafe-style menu if you're hungry. Your coordinator pulls up a chair with you and your companion to walk through aftercare, slowly enough that it actually lands. The driver pulls up the moment the physician clears you.
You leave with the coordinator's mobile number. Once the attending physician has cleared you for travel, the driver pulls up.
You stay in the Escalade. The medical lane keeps the crossing quick.
A short check-in from your patient coordinator at 24 to 48 hours, and again at 1 week. Text, email, or call, whatever works for you. Scheduled follow-ups run through month 12.
We don't hide that it's Mexico. We also don't make it feel like Mexico, the parts that matter to you (the driver, the lane, the letter, the return) are handled. Here's exactly how.
Most cell therapy in Mexico is delivered out of small, standalone clinics, some excellent, most not. Celva operates inside Hospital Angeles Tijuana: a 116-bed private hospital, part of Angeles Health, one of Mexico's largest private hospital networks. Your suite is on Level 2. If anything clinical happens, anything, the ER is on Level 1 and the ICU is on Level 5. That is the entire argument. Serious complications are genuinely rare, and most patients never need any of this. The capability is here the way it would be at a hospital back home, in case you ever do.
We don't design for Instagram. Each room is picked for a job, the intake happens where intake should happen, the infusion happens where you can be safely monitored, and the lab is its own sealed environment upstairs. You'll likely only see two of these in person.
FIG. 03.C · Suite 4-08
Eight suites on our floor. Recliner & a companion chair, en-suite bath, a window that actually opens, continuous patient monitor at the bedside, oxygen and suction wall-ports. The infusion runs here; so does the monitored rest period that follows, until the attending physician authorizes discharge.
FIG. 03.D · Proc. room 4-02
Articulated C-arm table, GE LOGIQ ultrasound, fluoroscopy when indicated. Intra-articular and epidural placements happen here under imaging, not "landmark-guided" in a recliner. The orthopedic physician stays in the room for the full procedure.
FIG. 03.E · Lab (no visitors)
The cell processing lab is operated by Celva's physician team inside Hospital Angeles, Tijuana. The proprietary cells prepared here are manufactured by Celva, not bought from an outside lab. It is a clean suite with laminar-flow biosafety cabinets, certified incubators, and a chain-of-custody tracking system that logs each vial from cryostorage to bedside. On a treatment morning your dose is prepared here in a fixed window before infusion, under tightly controlled conditions, with every handling parameter watched and the cell count and viability re-confirmed one final time. This is the most exacting step of the day, and it is done slowly and deliberately, because a living cell mishandled in this window cannot do anything for you once it reaches your suite. Nothing is released until those numbers clear.
You meet each of them by name. Each has a specific job, a specific time-window, and a specific thing they'll ask you. No one is "the assistant" or "the guy from upstairs." If anything comes up after you go home, two of them are on your phone.
Meet the team →
The person handling the scheduling and logistics behind your visit. They line up your appointments, hotel, driver, and pre-visit labs before you arrive, then keep your follow-up calls on the calendar afterward. Most of it happens before you land.
Meets you · 07:00 & on phone thereafter
Same driver both legs of the day. Car seats four, bottled water, phone charger. Knows the lanes, knows the letter.
Meets you · 07:00 lobby
The person who greets you when you arrive and stays with you through the day. She walks you through the hospital, gets you where you need to be, and handles whatever comes up, from a form to a coffee. If you need anything on-site, you ask her.
Meets you · on arrival
The spine specialist who heads the physician team, reviews your case, designs your MSC protocol, and leads the procedures. He or someone trained directly under him is the attending physician in the building during your procedure.
Meets you · 09:15 · suite
Interventional radiologist. Reviews your MRI and imaging with you, then guides the ultrasound or fluoroscopy in the suite. Also reads the regenerative literature so the team doesn't drift into overclaiming.
Reviews your imaging · with you
Anesthesiology and safety. For targeted injections she runs your twilight sedation; during IV infusions she watches your vitals throughout. She trained directly under Dr. Amescua.
Meets you · in the suite
Takes your vitals, places the IV, stays on the floor for the full infusion and the observation window that follows it.
With you · through the infusion
Posted at the main treatment-floor desk through your visit. Whenever any part of your care needs an extra set of hands, she is the one already there.
On the floor · all day
In the cell-processing lab, they prepare your dose the morning of treatment and run the checks that clear it. Every detail is deliberate, because how the cells are handled shapes how well the treatment works. They carry the cleared dose into your suite themselves.
Lab to your suite · treatment morningAll of it at once, so you don't have to. If your question isn't here, ask your coordinator, they keep a living list and will add it.
Composed from the first three questions every patient asks on an intake call. If your real question is "should I even be doing this," start on Proof or the evaluation page.
The Zona Urbana Río corridor, where Hospital Angeles sits, is a business and medical district that looks and feels like San Diego's Mission Valley. Your day is a lobby, a lane, a private hospital floor, and a lane home. You are never on your own on the street, and you never leave the hospital grounds between arrival and discharge.
We've been doing this every week since 2009. If we thought any part of the corridor was unsafe, we'd say so, we cancel treatment days when border security advisories shift, and rebook you for a safer date.
There is a crash cart on our floor, a Level-III ICU three floors up, the ER one floor down, and an attending anesthesiologist in the building 24/7. Reactions to allogeneic MSC infusions are rare (we publish our rate on the Proof page); the vast majority are minor and resolve with a pause and an antihistamine. Anything beyond that is handled by the hospital in which you are standing, not by an ambulance to an unfamiliar ER.
Two major differences. First: dose. Most MSC products that are legal to market in the U.S. are in vials of a few hundred thousand cells; they are largely unproven at that concentration. Typical allogeneic infusions here deliver a clinically meaningful dose, weight-adjusted to the patient and consistent with the range used in the major published MSC trials. Second: regulation. Celva coordinates care performed by a licensed regenerative medicine practice in Mexico, the physician team at Hospital Angeles, regulated by COFEPRIS. The U.S. does not have an approved pathway for most of these protocols; so "it's easier" in the U.S. is not the same as "it's legal."
Some do, some don't, it depends largely on whether they've seen a peer-reviewed MSC trial recently. The physician team publishes its protocols, lot release data, and adverse event rate, and the team will speak with your physician directly on request. Most PCPs who've reviewed the materials end up fine with it. A minority remain unconvinced; that's their right, and we respect it.
One or two companions are welcomed in the suite for the full day; additional family can wait in the hospital's private guest lounge on Level 2. Translators are unnecessary, all clinical staff on our floor are bilingual, but we've had patients bring one anyway for their own comfort, which is fine.
A medical-necessity change to your treatment date is accommodated without penalty. Your coordinator rebooks the hospital day and the lab slot for the next date that works for you, typically within the following few months. The earlier you tell us, the more flexibility there is, since the cell dose is put on order and the lab is scheduled in the final days before treatment.
Ten short questions about your situation, goals, and timing. At the end, one of four result pages, matched to where you actually are. Educational only. Not a diagnosis, not a commitment.
Ten short questions. At the end, one of four next steps matched to where you are. Educational only, it won't tell you whether you qualify for treatment. That decision happens in a physician-led evaluation.
Enter your name and email, and we'll show your result plus a practical next step. Add a mobile number if you'd like it by text, too.
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Educational only · Not a diagnosis · Not a commitment
Everything on this page, distilled to the bits you'll actually use the day of. Border paperwork checklist. A map with the medical lane marked. The coordinator's direct line. The Hospital Angeles address in both languages. What to pack, and what not to.
See if you're a candidate. A Celva patient coordinator collects the details for your specific situation and passes them to Celva's medical team for independent review. No day is scheduled until that review is complete and you've decided to move forward.