DAVID RUMBACH
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- In his quest to help victims of spinal cord injury, Dr. Steven Hinderer admits he's ventured outside the comfort zone of conventional wisdom and standard practice.

Hinderer, medical director of the Center for Spinal Cord Injury of the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, in Detroit, has developed an intense program of rehabilitation that goes far beyond the normal scope, both in the exertion it requires of patients and in its basic goals.

He is also working closely with a promising but unproved adult stem cell implant performed only at a hospital in Lisbon, Portugal.

The highly invasive surgery cannot be performed in the United States, not because of the federal ban on stem cell research funding, but because the Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved its safety.

Two young people with local ties, both of them athletes paralyzed by spinal cord injuries, have been evaluated by Hinderer's program as candidates for the Lisbon stem cell procedure.

Sarah (Schools) Clay, 22, a former Mishawaka High School basketball star, is scheduled for the surgery next month. Her sister, Stephanie Schools, organized a softball tournament to raise funds for the operation, rehab and related expenses, estimated at $100,000.

Joey McTigue, also 22, a former Marian High School soccer player and now a junior at the University of Iowa, was scheduled for the surgery in June, but has decided not to have it this summer so he can graduate with his current classmates.

His father, Dr. Stephen McTigue, himself a surgeon, said Joey plans to go through Hinderer's rigorous rehab program this summer and may decide to have the stem cell transplant in the summer of 2007.

"We have not closed the door on Lisbon,'' McTigue said. "It's still a viable option.''

At McTigue's invitation, Hinderer came to South Bend last month to explain his program and to vigorously defend his reasons for going outside the conventional bounds of rehab medicine.

He spoke to physicians at Memorial Hospital and gave a public lecture at Indiana University School of Medicine, South Bend, as part of IU's annual mini-med school series.

Hinderer said doctors have gotten much better in recent decades at saving the lives of people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries, so much so there are now 250,000 people paralyzed by the injuries living in the United States.