You are picked up at home, at your hotel, or at the airport, treated in a private suite inside Hospital Angeles, Tijuana, and never once left on your own.
Your home, a San Diego hotel lobby, or the 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 from the border. You enter the main lobby on Paseo de los Héroes and go straight up: intake is already done.
Nurse + physician both present. Imaging, if your case needs it, is done on site and read in-house the same day.
An IV infusion runs about 45 minutes. A joint or spinal injection is done in the procedure room under imaging, and adds 60 to 90 minutes. Either way your dose was cleared before you arrived, and a physician is on the floor throughout.
A physician monitors you. Coffee and food from the café. Your coordinator goes through aftercare, and the driver pulls up when you are cleared.
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.
Your coordinator checks in at 24 to 48 hours and again at 1 week, by text, email, or call. Scheduled follow-ups run through month 12.
You never get out of the car at the border. Not into the pedestrian line you have seen in photographs. Your driver crosses with you both ways. It is 15 miles to the hospital doors, most of it still San Diego.
Your suite is on Level 2 of Hospital Angeles Tijuana, part of the Angeles Health network. The emergency department is on Level 1 and the intensive care unit on Level 5, staffed around the clock. Most cell therapy in Mexico is delivered from standalone clinics. This is a hospital.
The suite is yours from arrival to discharge. Some treatments also use the procedure room, where the work is done under live imaging.
A recliner, not a hospital bed. Whoever came with you takes the chair beside it. The infusion runs here, and the rest after, until a physician authorizes discharge. Oxygen and suction sit behind you, for a day that will not need them. One of eight suites.
Walked down for that part of the day, and walked back. The needle goes in under live imaging, a GE LOGIQ ultrasound or the C-arm's fluoroscopy, not guessed from the surface. The orthopedic physician stays from first stick to last.
Each of them by name, each with one job. Two of them are still on your phone after you go home.
They line up your appointments, hotel, driver, and pre-visit labs before you arrive, then keep your follow-ups on the calendar. Most of their work is done before you land.
Meets you · 09:00 & on phone thereafterSame driver both legs of the day. Car seats four, bottled water, phone charger. Knows the lanes, knows the letter.
Meets you · 09:00 lobbyShe meets you at the entrance and stays all day. What goes wrong in a foreign hospital is usually not knowing where to go, who to ask, or what a form says. She handles all of it.
Meets you · on arrivalHeads the physician team. Reviews your case, designs your protocol, leads the procedures. He or someone he trained is in the building for yours.
Meets you · 09:45 · suiteInterventional radiologist. He goes through your MRI with you, then guides the ultrasound or fluoroscopy. He also reads the literature, so the team does not drift into overclaiming.
Reviews your imaging · with youAnesthesiology 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 suiteTakes your vitals, places the IV, stays on the floor for the full infusion and the observation window that follows it.
With you · through the infusionPosted at the treatment-floor desk through your visit. When any part of your care needs an extra set of hands, she is already there.
On the floor · all dayThey prepare your dose on the morning of treatment and run the checks that clear it. Then they carry it 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.
Zona Urbana Río, where Hospital Angeles sits, feels like San Diego's Mission Valley. Your day is a lobby, a lane, a hospital floor, and a lane home. You are never on the street on your own.
We have run this route every week since 2009. If we thought it was unsafe we would say so. When advisories shift, we cancel the day and rebook you.
A crash cart on the floor, the ICU three floors up, the ER one down, an anesthesiologist in the building 24/7. Reactions to allogeneic MSC infusions are rare (we publish our rate on the Proof page), and most resolve with a pause and an antihistamine. Anything more is handled by the hospital you are standing in.
Dose and regulation. Most MSC products legal to market in the U.S. hold a few hundred thousand cells, largely unproven at that concentration. Infusions here are weight-adjusted, consistent with the major published trials. Celva coordinates care performed by the physician team at Hospital Angeles, a licensed practice regulated by COFEPRIS. The U.S. has no approved pathway for most of these protocols, so "easier" there is not the same as "legal."
Some do, some don't. The physician team publishes its protocols, lot release data, and adverse event rate, and will speak with your doctor on request. A minority stay unconvinced. That is their right.
One or two companions in the suite for the full day; additional family wait in the guest lounge on Level 2. Nobody has to come, with one exception: sedation requires someone to take you out. Translators are unnecessary. Every clinical staff member on the floor is bilingual.
A medical-necessity change carries no penalty. Your coordinator rebooks the hospital day and the lab slot. Tell us early if you can: the dose is ordered and the lab scheduled in the final days before treatment.
Everything on this page, cut down to what you actually use on the day. The coordinator's direct line, the Hospital Angeles address in both languages, and what to pack.
A patient coordinator collects your details and passes them to Celva's medical team for independent review. No day is scheduled until that review is done and you have decided to go ahead.