In recent years, stem cell therapy has greatly changed the orthobiologics industry. It is mainly being used for bone healing and joint regeneration and is rapidly gaining popularity over traditional treatments. Let’s understand in detail how orthopedic stem cells work:
What Are Stem Cells and Why Are They Important?
Stem cells therapy is a versatile treatment for musculoskeletal injuries and other conditions. How? Because these cells have the ability to develop into different types of cells such as bone, cartilage, and muscle cells. Orthopedic stem cells can be used to repair damaged tissue, broken bones, or degenerated joints.
Stem Cells and Bone Healing: A Promising Solution
If you’ve ever had a fracture, you know that it’s a very unpleasant experience, to say the least. Depending on which bone has been damaged, it can hinder your daily life greatly, even making every day tasks a big hassle. Stem cell therapy can reduce this hassle by speeding up the bone healing process.
How the process works is stem cells are harvested from the patient’s body (usually from fat or bone marrow) and then injected at the injured area. These cells simply promote the body natural healing process, making recovery faster. This treatment is especially useful for complex fractures such as a broken hip, as these injuries can leave people totally immobile and unable to move.
How Stem Cells Help in Broken Hip Recovery
A broken hip one of the worst fractures possible as it makes even basic tasks, such as walking, basically impossible and takes a very long time to get better, especially for older adults. Recovery often involves lengthy physical therapy and a great deal of pain. However, stem cell therapy is showing promise as a way to improve broken hip recovery outcomes. By using orthopedic stem cells, the body’s healing process can be accelerated, reducing inflammation, promoting bone repair, and improving the quality of the tissue that regenerates.
Also, stem cell therapy not only speeds up recovery but can improve the overall movement of the joint as well. This is because, the cells also help the surrounding muscle regain strength, in addition to repairing the bone.
Joint and Hip Cartilage Regeneration with Stem Cells
Cartilage works as a sort of cushion between our bone, helping us move smoothly without any friction. But with age, or due to any injury or condition, this cartilage can wear down, making movements painful and eventually leading to immobility in patients.
So, how to stem cells help with this? They are injected into the affected joint, where they help produce new cartilage cells. This therapy can be useful for many patients including:
• Those who have damaged their cartilage due to any traumatic injuries
• People with degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis
• Older patients (as cartilage deteriorates with age)
Stem cells can help these patients a lot. Firstly, they regenerate cartilage, which solves the main problem. But, they also strengthen the surrounding tissue and muscles, improving their overall mobility.
