Green Bay Packers tight end Jimmy Graham is still going strong at age 31 despite suffering a ruptured patellar tendon on his right knee in 2015, which is a potentially career-ending injury. Despite recovering from the injury, Graham still experienced chronic knee pain while playing with the Seattle Seahawks back in 2016.
Instead of undergoing knee surgery to relieve the pain, Graham turned to a nonsurgical option in the form of extracellular vesicle (EV) treatment, an offshoot of stem cell therapy. It succeeded in getting him pain-free ever since, and he admits he’ll likely continue the treatment for the rest of his career.
“I went through the whole (2017) offseason, about three or four months, I played in another NFL season, and now I’m on the back end of that NFL season and actually I’m on my way to do stem cells again,” Graham said per Pete Dougherty of Packers News. “It’s something I’ll probably do for the rest of my career just from the results I’ve had personally.”
While it’s promising that Graham has discovered a treatment that has helped prolong his career and eliminated the pain in his knee, there are legitimate risks to EV treatment. It is still relatively new and unproven, and its long-term effects aren't fully known as of yet. There have been cases of internal organ damage among patients who have undergone such treatment.
But it appears that Graham is willing to take his chances for the sake of his career. Hopefully for him, it does not end up adversely affecting him sometime down the road.
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