The December 2012 Foot & ankle Roundup³⁶⁰ looks at: correcting the overcorrected club foot; syndesmotic surgery; autograft for osteochondral defects; sesamoidectomy after fracture in athletes; complications in ankle replacement; the arthroscope as a treatment for ankle osteoarthritis; whether da Vinci was a modern foot surgeon; and a popliteal block in ankle fixation.

Modern athletes are constantly susceptible to performance-threatening injury as they push their bodies to greater limits and endure higher physical stresses. Loss of performance and training time can adversely and permanently affect a sportsperson’s career. Now more than ever with advancing medical technology the answer may lie in biologic therapy. We have been using peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) clinically and have been able to demonstrate that stem cells differentiate into target cells to enable regenerative repair. The potential of this technique as a regenerative agent can be seen in three broad applications: 1) articular cartilage, 2) bone and 3) soft tissue. This article highlights the successful cases, among many, in all three of these applications.