04 May Is Regenerative Medicine Right for Your Condition?
As pain management doctors in Texas, the team here at Lone Star works awfully hard to help people manage chronic pain so that they can live their best possible lives. One of our goals is to continually monitor emerging treatments with the knowledge that one such treatment might help one of our patients. This immediately brings to mind regenerative medicine.
Lone Star Pain Medicine recently began offering two regenerative medicine procedures on a limited basis: platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections and autologous stem cell injections. They are the two most talked about regenerative medicine procedures right now. We also offer a similar procedure known as prolotherapy.
Is regenerative medicine right for your condition? There is no way to know without a consultation with one of our pain doctors. But know this, patients with knee pain in Weatherford, Fort Worth, Dallas, and throughout Texas have found relief through regenerative medicine. So have osteoarthritis patients and others suffering from a wide variety of musculoskeletal injuries.
PRP Injections
Human blood contains a litany of ingredients necessary to human life. Platelets are among them. Your platelets fill two vital roles: they form blood clots, and they alert your body to an injury in need of immediate healing. The whole point of PRP injections is to jump-start that healing process and keep it going.
Platelet-rich plasma contains a number of important growth factors the body uses to heal itself. Combining those growth factors with platelets’ natural alert function can help alleviate chronic pain by promoting healing.
Rest assured that the PRP we use in our procedure is provided directly by the patient being treated. This minimizes the risk of complications, and it completely eliminates the risk of rejection. PRP injections are safe when conducted in accordance with current FDA standards.
Stem Cell Injections
Like PRP injections, stem cell injections are designed to promote natural healing. Stem cells are the body’s building blocks at the cellular level. They can become a variety of tissue types based on signals the body sends them. When we recommend stem cell injections for osteoarthritis, for example, we are expecting the cells to trigger the growth of new cartilage in the affected joints.
Patients donate their own stem cells just as they would platelets for PRP injections. That makes stem cell injections equally safe. Around the country, stem cell injections are now being used to address sports injuries, arthritis, certain types of back pain, and more.
Prolotherapy
Even though prolotherapy doesn’t get the same amount of attention normally paid to PRP and stem cell injections, it is yet a third option for someone interested in trying alternative treatments. Prolotherapy is another injection therapy, this time utilizing a local anesthetic and dextrose to ‘trick’ the body into thinking a new injury has occurred. The body’s natural healing response hopefully kicks in without the need for pharmacological intervention.
When prolotherapy proves successful, chronic pain is alleviated through natural healing processes. We are especially thrilled when a patient’s diagnosis indicates prolotherapy is appropriate because prolotherapy is one of the most fundamental procedures we offer. Over the years, it has proved safe and effective for countless Lone Star patients.
Regenerative medicine is all about combining treatment with healing. It is designed to get to the root cause of chronic pain and deal with it. Though it is not right for everyone, regenerative medicine might be right for you. If you would like to learn more about how it can alleviate the pain of musculoskeletal injuries and disease, get in touch with us at your convenience. Then come see us at our Weatherford clinic.
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