You're probably reading this with the MRI report open in another tab: one level, L4-L5 or L5-S1, and an operation with a date on it. At Hospital Angeles in Tijuana, 25 to 30 minutes from San Diego, the physician team reads that report and says plainly whether an image-guided injection fits your disc, or whether the surgeon is right. No disc removed. No hardware. Most patients home the same day.
Your first call is with a patient coordinator, who collects your MRI report for the physician team to read. Nobody quotes or books treatment before that read.
Mesenchymal stem cells go into and around the disc under live X-ray. Nothing is cut out and nothing is bolted in, so the levels above and below keep doing their own work.
Local soreness at the injection sites for about a week, then cleared for normal activity. Check-in calls at 1 week, then at 1, 3 and 6 months, then once a year, from home.
Most people who reach this page have climbed the same ladder: physical therapy, a cortisone shot, an epidural that bought a few months, a second that bought fewer, then a surgeon naming the level. That relief fading is what a steroid does. It doesn't mean your back has failed. The physician team reads your MRI against your pain pattern, and a finding that doesn't match the pain is a reason to keep looking, not a reason to inject.
A contained herniation or degenerative disc at 1 or 2 levels, disc height preserved, a pain pattern that matches the MRI, and PT, cortisone or epidurals behind you. The profile we accept most often.
Pain down a leg from an irritated nerve root, at a level that matches the MRI. The injection targets the inflammation around the root.
A surgeon's recommendation doesn't close the evaluation. Pain without a weakening nerve, from a contained disc, is read individually.
Those are a surgeon's cases, and we recommend one we trust. Sudden leg weakness, numbness spreading through the groin, or any loss of bladder or bowel control is an emergency: go to an emergency room today.
Candidacy is confirmed from your imaging and the call. When you arrive, the physicians examine you in person to plan exactly how the treatment is done on your back.
Most patients are back across the border the same day, after the attending physician authorizes discharge, with a Celva driver. Every placement runs under fluoroscopy (a live X-ray), with contrast dye confirming the level before any cells are released.
A Celva driver picks you up anywhere in Southern California. A companion is welcome, never required, and nobody has to find parking. The physicians examine you in person first to plan the injection. An old MRI can be re-imaged at Hospital Angeles that day.
Local anesthetic always, with twilight sedation available if you want it. The injection takes 15 to 30 minutes.
Into the disc, around it, around the nerve root, or into the facet joint, depending on your MRI. 1 to 3 levels in a session.
Bone-marrow and umbilical-cord MSCs (mesenchymal stem cells) from a screened donor, grown in the on-site cGMP-compliant lab and released only after 6 assays. The physician team picks the cells, doses and levels from your imaging. Almost every spine patient also receives a systemic IV the same day.
The physician team, board-certified anesthesiology and hospital imaging are on site for your session.
The day above starts with your MRI report. Send what you have and the physician team reads it before anyone books anything.
Book a call →"I just didn't want to have bolts in my back. I just didn't want hardware." That's Scott M., 68, a degenerative-disc patient of ours who had been told a fusion was next. Not wanting hardware is a reason to get evaluated. It isn't, on its own, a reason to skip the operation, and the table is where the two part ways.
The honest limit: a fusion settles one segment but stiffens a spine built to move as a whole, and the levels above and below take the extra load. When there is true instability, a weakening nerve, or an urgent finding, surgery is the right tool, and it stays open afterwards. A fusion already done stays fused; the level next to it is evaluated like any other.
No promises about outcomes. What you get is a schedule somebody keeps: four calls in the first 6 months, then one a year, from home, each one measured against where you started.
The injection sites stay sore for about a week, then settle. At 1 week your patient coordinator or aftercare specialist calls, by phone or video, and a physician joins when needed. You're then cleared for normal activity.
The cells work slowly, through signaling to nearby tissue. This call checks how you're settling. Treatment is one session, not a course.
Sitting, standing, morning stiffness, how far you walk. Around 90 days is when those start to move, for the people they move for.
This call compares you with where you started. Whether a second treatment makes sense is decided at these reviews.
Every one of those calls is measured against the first one: the MRI and the pain pattern you bring to it.
Book a call →Nobody is quoted, booked, or treated before the physician team has read your MRI.
Your first call is with a patient coordinator, who takes your history and tells you what to send. Nothing to commit to on the call.
Your MRI report, the level your surgeon named, and what has been tried. No binder required.
Your MRI against your pain pattern: candidate or not, and how many levels.
A written answer, with a plan and an itemized quote for your case.
If the answer is no, it comes from the physician team, with the reason and the name of a surgeon we trust where that is the right next call.
Steps 1 and 2 are the only ones you do. Take the call, send the report, and the rest is ours.
Book a call →Most cell therapy in Mexico is delivered out of small, standalone clinics, some excellent, most not. A spine injection is the one place that difference matters most. Celva operates inside Hospital Angeles Tijuana: a 116-bed private hospital, part of Angeles Health, one of Mexico's largest private hospital networks.
The physicians on every chart. Full bios →
Ask any clinic what's in the building if a spine injection needs more than the room it's done in. Then ask us.
Book a call →Your first call is with a Celva patient coordinator, about 15 minutes, who collects your case and passes it to the physician team for independent review. Then the physician team tells you plainly, in writing: candidate, or a surgeon's case. No pitch either way, and nothing to commit to on the call.
Have ready: the MRI report, the level your surgeon named, and the list of what has been tried.