Stem Cell Therapy

Almost everywhere you turn these days you are going to see a medical advertisement for stem cell treatments promising the moon.  Unfortunately, there are too many unethical practitioners out there irresponsibly leading the public to believe that these types of treatments are a cure all for everything from arthritis to multiple sclerosis.

First off, let us take a look at what in fact we’re talking about when we use the term “stem cells”.  In the regenerative medicine world, we are typically discussing mesenchymal stem cells and the two primary areas that we can derive these cells from are our patient’s bone marrow or our patient’s fat.  There used to be the notion that these cells could then turn into all sorts of things like new cartilage and new bone.  However, we now look at these mesenchymal stem cells as potent signaling cells which are going to help recruit the body’s repair mechanism for things such as cartilage defects which we commonly see in conditions such as osteoarthritis.

 

The world of regenerative medicine is in fact an exciting new area of medicine, however, patients need to be informed about what cells we are targeting and what are the realistic expectations for such procedures.  Our physicians have undergone extensive training in regenerative medicine.  Feel free to schedule a consult to see if this treatment option is the right fit for you.


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