Stem Cell Therapy
We offer stem cell therapy. As yet, there is no consensus on its efficacy but there is substantiate empirical support for its benefits. Treatment consists in injecting in osteoarthritic joints pluripotential, undifferentiated cells, referred to as stem cells, which have the ability to mature into specialized cell types such as articular cartilage cells.
The procedure consists in harvesting adult stem cells (the other type is embryonic) from fat, usually from the abdomen (falciform ligament), in sufficient quantity to provide two or three treatments. The fat then undergoes a rigorous process, in house, to isolate the stem cells. It takes about 3 hours. The recipient is then sedated and stem cells are injected into the joint or joints targeted. Typically, enough fat was harvested to leave a surplus of stem cells for a second and often a third treatment. Those surplus stem cells are sent to an outside lab for storage in liquid nitrogen until needed for subsequent treatments.
- The procedure takes the better part of one day
- The onset of benefits is about 2 months post-treatment
- The duration of action varies from 8 months to 16 months
- Subsequent treatments require only about 2 hours of hospitalization