Unique Access Medical in Thailand

I'm looking into getting stem cell treatment in Orange County. I see your profile says you are from San Diego. Have you been looking into stem cell treatment centers in Southern California? I'm trying to figure out what center is best! Maybe we can compare notes!

 

Seriously guys if you consider stem cells go to Mimbo Shim....

 

A new video from Unique Access. About the clinic in general, not tinnitus specifically.

Unique Access Medical Patients Share Their...

 

I agree. We have very few anecdotal experiences of stem cell therapy for tinnitus. Other than ATEOS I can't think of anyone. Well there was another person I guess, but I can't remember his name offhand. Still others have said they were going to try stem cell, only to vanish into oblivion for some reason? No news = bad news I assume?

 

There have been a few others.

Two that come to mind are @whiskeykonteq and @DebInAustralia - both of them have posted a number of times about their experiences with stem cells here on Tinnitus Talk.

Their posts about stem cells can be found quite easily with the search function.

 

Yeah I guess I forgot them. There was another recent person as well. I guess Samantha was to a clinic also but I don't recall her experience. I must be doing really bad to be looking at unproven stem cell clinics. Noise has been relentless lately.

I should have looked at this thread more closely first. I believe I google searched and it lead me to @TOVEGA's post.

 

While not a recent one, it was a while back, another who has reported on TTalk that he underwent stem cell treatment is @FERNANDO GIL. Here are links to a couple of posts where he mentions it.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...-end-up-being-the-cure.2225/page-8#post-87448

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/low-level-laser-therapy-lllt-for-tinnitus-—-experiences-dr-wilden-etc.295/page-8#post-72132

 

That sort of is my point. We're approaching almost 25,000 registered users on this site and only 4 that I know of have done stem cell therapy. I think it's a very promising treatment for many conditions. Unfortunately, I have not found many places, especially in the US that specifically offer or mention treating T with stem cell therapy. I've emailed a few places and received no responses about stem cells and T. Plus the very few that did get Stem Cell therapy for T didn't have great results as far as I'm aware. ATEOS also did LLLT as well as a Retigabine treatment as far as I recall.
But is someone has some examples or good info./leads on a stem cell clinic offering treatment for T do post...

 

Tinnitus Talk is a great resource but one element that is always challenging to achieve is consolidated and summarized information on treatment results, since by nature of the format information gets spread out across multiple posts and multiple threads.

An additional person who has reported on stem cell treatment is @Pleasure_Paulie, here is a post:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...l-treatment-comments.1891/page-37#post-299559

So that makes 5 reliable Tinnitus Talk members that I can think of (so far) who have reported on stem cell treatment (there are a couple other posts from people claiming to have done stem cell therapy, but the posts have no details and do not necessarily seem genuine to me). Here are the 5 long-time Tinnitus Talk members who have made the reports on stem cell therapy that seem fully authentic:

@attheedgeofscience
@FERNANDO GIL
@whiskeykonteq
@DebInAustralia
@Pleasure_Paulie

Not a big number to be sure, just anecdotes, but for anyone contemplating stem cell treatment, I am grateful to these Tinnitus Talk members for sharing their experiences with stem cell therapy. On other stem cell therapy discussion boards, such as the several Facebook groups on stem cells and the Stem Cell Pioneers forum, even anecdotes about tinnitus seem to be not available.

So, as always, Tinnitus Talk has some of the best information, with great thanks to @Markku and the other staff members for their dedicated work.

 

The true reality is that NO stem cell clinic can claim to improve tinnitus - because there is no established treatment protocol.
I do not wish to sound harsh, but if you want to try it - just try it. I did and it did jacksh_t for my tinnitus, but hey, I tried.
You can sit around and wait for others to take their leap of faith and invest their $$$$, but the reality is that it may work or it may not and you won't know if you don't try it.
Eg. - ATEOS had some improvements, whiskeykonteq did not. Deb feels her hyperacusis is better, Pleasure_Paulie and myself had no results.
At the end of the day, these clinics are going to be more than happy to take your money and give it a try.
If any clinic has evidence of success and a specific treatment protocol, then I'll try again. Until then, my money is on habituation which is working best for me so far.

 

@LJMD

also went to Stem Cells 21 and claims he had a 25% reduction that came from injections around the ear. See posts in last page of:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/my-trip-to-bangkok-stem-cell-treatment-comments.1891/

Or was the 25% reduction due to the natural ups and downs of T? Or habituation? Most people have good and bad days.

I agree with Smantha R. Nothing ventured nothing gained. We need more members like her. You won't know until you try. Doing nothing will get you nothing. If enough of us keep trying different things, and posting the results, we just may stumble across something that works. Everyone is different so not everything will work for everyone, just like anything else. Good luck...

 

I went to the Unique Access clinic yesterday which is close to my house here in Bangkok (Im Canadian living in Bangkok the last 15 years) and spoke to an Italian woman named Laura (Claiming she is a Clinical Psychologist) regarding my Meniere's disease and my friends father's ALS. She was extremely helpful and friendly but as I am skeptical by nature a quick google search revealed this article that someone else has posted already: https://justicefordrmajid.wordpress...lls-unique-medical-access-world-medical-scam/

I likely will forward this article to them but I am sure they will have a slick response to it as they have likely done many times. Its also possible that the scam article as an agenda, I cant seem to find many other negative articles about the clinic.

Laura said they have had some moderate success with Meniere's and Tinnitus but in fairness she didn't seem to emphatic about the subject and switched to wanting to talk about the ALS subject. The cost of the therapy is cheaper than their usual 22k USD fee coming in at 20% or so cheaper.

I know this message is not much help and given I am apprehensive now after the article, I will likely follow not follow up with this option. I will update with any other info on this clinic should something material come to light.

 

I would like to address the issue of Unique Access being a scam.

I don't believe this is fair. Let me explain why.

I had treatment at Unique Access in January 2017.
In no conversation did they ever promise to cure my tinnitus - they explained the "theory" behind why they thought it might help, but never ever promised a cure.

I researched the lead doctor at UA - and his credentials checked out. I find it highly unusual that a well qualified doctor would lend himself to a scam.

They run out of a world-class hospital. This hospital was well equipped, new, exceptionally clean. Whilst there, I had a quite scary incident with my eyes, and I was rushed down to Opthamology where I was well looked after and assured my eyes were fine. And they were.

They have an excellent support team - including a dedicated patient liason, acupuncturist, physiotherapists - who all tend to you during the stay with extra treatments.

I was administered my stem cells via lumbar puncture as well as IV. I had a qualified hospital anaesthesiologist perform the lumbar puncture procedure.

I was monitored closely during my treatment, excellent nursing attention.

I met with the Australian MD during my stay. I had what I believe is an honest conversation with him. He believes in what they do and shared with me their plans for the future, how they do what they do, the background of the head doctor, their research etc etc.

The only thing that I can see might be a scam, is if they are indeed peddaling false hope. One must be open minded that the treatment might not work. It is experimental medicine, and at no stage did anyone at UA ever promise to cure my tinnitus.

I wasn't desperate for a cure, however. I can't imagine if I had a degenerative condition such as ALS just how much more desperate I would be.

The only thing that smells like a "scam" here is people being promised a cure, when in reality they can't do that. This was most definitely not my experience.

I'm not a dumb person, and I most definitely wasn't scammed (unless there were no stem cells delivered in the IV or lumbar puncture to me, and I guess you've got to trust them on that).

The follow up program is extensive, and they were most disappointed that I hadn't had any results.
The reason for taking videos of the patients is that they do expect them to have some progress during treatment. I'm not sure this is a fair expectation or not, but maybe they've had patients who've made progress.

Obviously testimonials carry a heavy weight when patients are looking at treatment options. As they have patients from all around the world, they often find that they don't get the feedback after the patient leaves and therefore can't use any positive feedback for marketing purposes.

When I said that I didn't want to do a video because it was too soon and I didn't want to mislead anyone, they were totally fine. I wasn't pushed any further and my wishes were respected.
So people honestly shouldn't just believe what they read one way or the other. Do your own research and go from there. One negative report on the internet does not make a scam, nor does one positive report make it a scam.

@Eddy Frampton - I didn't meet Laura when I was there, but I think maybe trying to arrange a catch up with Dr Nasser would be worth your while.

I personally think that scam article does have an agenda, and I too can't find anything else that negative on the internet in regards to UA. It goes against how I know I was treated whilst there, and my whole experience.

You would have to admit that it's a highly elaborate scam if it is one.

While I was there, a little boy with a degenerative eye disease was getting treatment. The way the doctors and nurses cared for him was outstanding, I simply cannot believe that this is a scam.

Buyer beware for sure - no proven treatment exists for tinnitus, Menieres or ALS, so by taking any alternative treatment, one must fully be aware that this is experimental medicine and it may or may not work.

 

From what I read so far in the experiences that various members of this board had with stem cell treatment for tinnitus, it seems about a 50/50 shot about it helping. And then about 25/50% reduction of loudness in 1/2 treatments. Also, various members had various amounts of stem cells/different stem cells/different ways of administering them/different treatment protocols with different other treatments both before and after. These factors in addition to how they got tinnitus all can affect the results greatly. We simply need more of a sample size. Standardized treatment protocol preferred obviously.

@LMJD - noticed 25% reduction so far (cause - acoustic trauma And ototoxic medications)
@attheedgeofscience - noticed 50% reduction after two treatments (cause - childhood auto-immune disease)
@FERNANDO GIL - noticed a reduction, but not sure what % (cause - I believe it was acoustic trauma)
@whiskeykonteq - no improvement (cause - acoustic trauma)
@DebInAustralia - I believe a small improvement so far (cause - stress, hearing loss, sleep-apnea)
@Pleasure_Paulie - he had no improvement at all (cause - acoustic trauma)

If any of this information is incorrect, please feel free to correct it.

 

Musicians like Eric Clapton, who have incredible wealth would have tried stem cell clinics for their tinnitus if they really worked, it would seem to me. There really should be some testimonials of people that have been helped. No real track record does not sound too good.

 

I agree with Samantha R. Many people look at alternative treatments like Stem Cell Therapy as being scams when they don't work. But do traditional mainstream treatments at mainstream accredited western hospitals work all the time? Of course they don't. People die from ALS and other diseases despite being treated by mainstream approved treatments. Anything you do contains some risk. No guarantees on anything. But I do appreciate Eddy Frampton's info. I hope we can make informed decisions and try to at least lessen the risks and try methods and therapies with the best possible chance of success. Eddy, could it be possible that your friend that got his stem cell treatment just arrived too late to be helped? Maybe the treatment was not the cause of his death. In general I believe stem cells are a naturally occurring substance and I'm doubtful stem cells could do damage. Prescription drugs and surgeries can. For example, many people have negative side affects and even die even when properly using prescribed pharmaceuticals. Samantha R, did Unique Access offer you intratympanic injections? On their website they say they do offer that method of delivery.

They say:

"Stem cells have the ability to repair damaged cochlea’s hair cells that lead to tinnitus. By injecting new stem cells into the glial scar surface instead of underneath will greatly boost their survival, stem cells grow from the injected area of the auditory nerve which then move from cochlea to the brainstem (the part of the brain that regulates the flow of signals from the brain to the ear), repairing the hearing function."

https://stemcells21.com/eye-hearing/stem-cell-tinnitus-treatment/

It seems that this gets the stem cells to the exact place they need to get to, so logically that would have the best chance of success. Just like when someone has a knee problem, clinics inject the stem cells into the knee, not through an IV or into the lumbar. You ideally want as many stem cells to get to the affected area. I'm not aware of any others on this board getting their stem cells delivered by itratympmanic injection. I've looked into the Shea Clinic in Memphis as well. They do intratympanic injections of a steriod called Dexamethasone along with Lidocaine IV. And they say it's a pretty common procedure. But from what I understand, the positive effects are short lasting. As soon as the steroid and Lidocaine wear off the Tinnitus comes back. I also understand that doing an Intratympanic injection is fairly simple and has very low complication rates. So why not inject the Stem Cells right into the ear through the eardrum? I read Dr. Mimbo Shim in Korea was doing something similar but he seems pretty shady to me. Any thoughts or info?

 

I’m happy to elaborate further on my experiences, but I believe patients who may benefit from stem cells are those who’s causes are not as the result of an ascoustic trauma or loss of hair cells. The non pluripotent Stem cells you can receive via IV MAY simply improve other conditions in the body such as autoimmune conditions and inflammation causing tinnitus. Thus improvement to their tinnitus is often an unintended benefit of the treatment. Because tinnitus origins are so different for the population, and often it’s impossible to pinpoint an exact cause, this is why some people see success and others like myself do not.

Simply put, even the umbilical cord/blood multipotent mesenchymal stem cells that I received can’t magically grow hair cells and repair nerve damaged synapses. Will this change in the future using special pluripotent cells that can grow into new hair cells, absolutely.

PS. Try not to believe the marketing that’s disconnected from the science of current stem cell treatments on these companies websites. It’s very expensive, and these companies are a business; very profitable ones too I imagine. It may work, it may not - don’t be under the illusion stem cells is a silver bullet.

 

@TOVEGA
No, UA did not offer intra-tympanic injections.
Only lumbar puncture and IV. The theory behind the lumbar puncture was that the stem cells would travel in the spinal fluid to the brain and ear.
The link you have included for intra-tympanic injections is Stem Cells 21. I also enquired with Stem Cells 21 at the time of making my decision and they did not offer intra-tympanic injections.
They offered IV, injections around the ear and inhalation. The intra-tympanic must be new. I believe there may be a study on intra tympanic stem cell injections, I'd have to find it.
In regards to IV stems, it's worth reading about the "pulmonary first pass effect" - a lot of stem cells are trapped in the lungs when delivered by IV. So I seriously doubt that an IV infusion alone would be enough to get to the inner ear.
I agree with @Pleasure_Paulie - the way we understand things today, we currently have no science that enables us to regrow hair cells or repair damaged synapses. Stem cells can have a systemic benefit in reducing inflammation and also in regulating the immune system.
Someone else can try the intra-tympanic injections and let me know how they go! I've done enough $$$ on stem cells. Lol.

 

I was to Shea for that procedure in July 2011. I only had my left ear done. They did burn a hole with a laser in my right eardrum too, but with no perfusions.

 

@just1morething
How did you go with the IV dexa & lidocaine? Did it help your tinnitus?
If so, how long did the effects last?

 

I can't really remember the details too much. It was covered by insurance at the time for out of network.

Here is the thread with some of my comments as well as others:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/lidocaine-and-dexamethasone-perfusion.2877/

 

I am pretty sure that if the Unique Access wasn't a legit provider, then the following story would have been published with a somewhat different narrative (considering that The Mirror is a major news outlet in the UK):

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/meet-paralysed-biker-who-120m-8620124

The article states (in part):

"The pioneering surgery was carried out at Unique Access Medical in Thailand at a cost of £47,000 and is not available in the UK."

No mention of scam in that article. In fact, the individual (Andrew Bell) seems quite happy about his treatment:

"Having been told I would never even wiggle my toe against I could lift my leg three days after the surgery. Now it is just a case of getting stronger and stronger, I am working every day, standing and using the frame as much as I can."

Anyway, I only joined this thread since my username happened to be tagged further up. I think there has been enough debate back-and-forth about stem cell therapy (just like other topics on this board)...

 

Al DiMeola tried this to no avail.

 

Folks, the stem cells are not injected into the tympanic membrane (ear drum). That in itself is a huge problem, because you want it getting into the inner ear. Fact.

Secondly, the research I did on Thailand the prices were between $25,000 - $55,000.

$15,000 sounds like a bargain, but if it ain't going into your eardrum, for me at least, sounds like a waste of time and money. You also will need a skilled surgeon to poke around with your ear, and I think a lot are reluctant to, because they have never done it before. If you read the posts from people who have had stem cells here, at least the last one, she said don't waste your money. And perhaps the reason so few people have done it is because they simply don't have an extra $35,000' and cant afford missing work for three months, just my humble opinion.

If I have the cash, it's PRP straight into the ear, no hocus pocus, no intravenous lasers making cool looking pictures, but scientifically beyond dubious.

 

The Daily Mirror is a joke, it's like saying The National Enquirer is a reputable news source. Elvis Presley was just sighted at a diner in Queens, New York just three days ago... news flash.

 

Do your research, if you got cash to burn, go for it, but the stem cells do not get injected into the ear where we want hair cells to regenerate... seems like a pretty big ask to get some intravenous blood work and hope it migrates to your inner ear.

Do the research, I have, the results are dubious to say the least. Please, if you find anything contrary, please post it, in reference to tinnitus and hearing loss, not Parkinson's or AIDS - specifically hearing loss and tinnitus.

I'd love to learn something new, completely open to learning new stuff. Again, not talking about Lupus or Myasthenia gravis, I'm talking about hearing loss and tinnitus.