Orthobiologic treatments — PRP, BMAC, and their combination — are now offered by a wide range of providers. You can find PRP injections at sports medicine clinics, pain management practices, naturopathic offices, and medspas. The treatment is becoming ubiquitous in ways that would have seemed remarkable a decade ago.
This proliferation has a downside. When the same label is applied to procedures that vary enormously in quality, the patient can’t easily tell the difference — until the outcome makes it clear.
The Scheinberg Method exists because orthobiologics, done right, require something that most providers don’t bring to the table: a surgeon’s understanding of anatomy, diagnosis, and precision.
What Makes Orthobiologics Work — Or Not
The effectiveness of PRP or BMAC treatment depends on four factors, and all four need to be right.
Accurate diagnosis. You can inject PRP into an area that is contributing to a patient’s pain, or into an area that isn’t. You can treat tendinopathy when the actual problem is a structural tear. You can address the joint when the issue originates above or below it. Without a precise and accurate diagnosis — the kind that comes from reading imaging with surgical expertise and correlating it with a thorough physical examination — the treatment is aimed at an approximation of the problem, not the problem itself.
The right treatment selection. Is PRP appropriate, or does the severity of degeneration indicate BMAC? Is a combined approach warranted? Should the treatment be delivered into the joint, into the tendon, or around the labrum? These decisions require judgment built on clinical experience — not just a familiarity with injection protocols.
Procedural precision. The injection must reach the target tissue with accuracy. A few millimeters off target in a rotator cuff injection, or an intra-articular injection that misses the joint space, means the biology lands in the wrong place. Dr. Scheinberg brings the same precision to these procedures that he brings to surgical interventions — because to him, there is no meaningful distinction. Every procedure deserves surgical-grade execution.
The right preparation. Concentration, activation, and processing of PRP and BMAC affect the quality of the final product. Dr. Scheinberg’s protocols are based on the clinical evidence for what produces the most therapeutically effective concentrate.
Forty Years of Surgical Context
Dr. Scheinberg trained at Harvard and Duke, earned his board certification in orthopedic surgery in 1982, and has spent four decades operating on the same structures he now treats with biologics. He has performed knee replacements and knows, firsthand, what advanced joint degeneration looks like and how it behaves. He has repaired rotator cuffs surgically and understands the architecture of the tissue. He has treated professional athletes — including Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi, Maria Sharapova, and Lindsay Davenport — and understands the difference between managing pain and restoring performance.
This background is not incidental to his orthobiologic work. It is the foundation of it.
When Dr. Scheinberg evaluates a patient’s MRI and determines that the damage is at a specific location within the posterior labrum, or that the partial rotator cuff tear is at the articular surface rather than the bursal side, that specificity is what allows the treatment to be targeted accurately. A general practitioner with a training weekend in PRP cannot make that same determination.
The Clinic as Infrastructure
The Santa Barbara clinic on Chapala Street is co-located with the Pueblo Surgical Center, an AAAHC-accredited ambulatory surgical facility that Dr. Scheinberg serves as Chief Medical Officer. This means that patients receiving orthobiologic care have access to the same diagnostic infrastructure, sterile environment, and procedural standards as surgical patients.
It also means that if biologic treatment ultimately proves insufficient and surgery becomes the right answer, the transition is seamless. Dr. Scheinberg is not choosing between surgery and biologics as competing business models. He is choosing the right tool for each patient’s problem — and he has both tools available.
The Philosophy
Dr. Scheinberg’s approach is often described as “biologic first” — but a more precise description might be “accurate diagnosis first, followed by the most appropriate intervention.” For most patients with moderate-to-advanced joint degeneration, that first intervention is orthobiologic. For some, it eventually involves surgery. The Scheinberg Method is the commitment to making that determination with surgical clarity and treating it with surgical precision.
That is the standard. And it is one that matters.