Throughout your lifetime, specialized cells inside your body platelets and stem cells keep you healthy by continuously healing injuries and regenerating new cells to rebuild damaged tissues.
Regenerative medicine taps into your body’s natural healing ability, retrieving these amazing cells and using them to treat your arthritic joints.
The interventional pain management centers have extensive experience using regenerative medicine to ease your arthritis pain. Here, they explain the cells used, how they heal, and where they originate.
Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP)
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) consists of a large number of platelets in a small amount of plasma (the fluid part of your blood). Platelets normally live in your bloodstream. When you’re injured or develop a disease like arthritis, they immediately go to the area and activate your body’s healing response.
Platelets are filled with proteins called growth factors. To begin healing, they simply release their growth factors. Growth factors then communicate with the surrounding cells, triggering essential healing activities, such as:
- Stimulating new blood vessel growth
- Reducing inflammation and pain
- Preventing degeneration of healthy tissues
- Supporting tissue rebuilding
- Promoting cellular growth
- Recruiting stem cells to the area
When injecting your PRP, we use real-time imaging to guide the needle, ensuring we release the plate right at the inflamed and injured tissues. The extra boost of injected platelets brings you relief from arthritis pain by accelerating healing in the joint.
PRP injections are especially beneficial when your natural platelets are overwhelmed by the ongoing, extensive joint damage caused by arthritis. An injection also makes a big difference in your pain when the injured tissues can’t get enough platelets because they have a poor blood supply.
Platelets are essential for beginning and supporting the overall healing process. The stem cells recruited to the area are your body’s healing agents capable of regenerating new tissues.
Stem Cell Therapy
Adult stem cells live throughout your body, where they have the remarkable ability to self-replicate and create new cells. Each new cell is capable of developing into many types of tissues.
One type of stem cell frequently used in regenerative medicine can recreate new bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, skin, and connective tissues. We use these stem cells to treat arthritis because they repair and regrow the different tissues damaged by the disease.
Stem cell therapy refers to getting an injection of concentrated stem cells. As the injected cells reach injured tissues, they regenerate new cells and heal. The extra boost of stem cells also gives you faster pain relief as it speeds up healing.
Producing PRP And Stem Cell Treatments
To make a PRP treatment, we simply draw a sample of your blood and process it in the centrifuge. The centrifuge separates the platelets and plasma from other blood components. Once the PRP is isolated, we draw it into a needle and inject it into your arthritic joint.
Your body fat and bone marrow are exceptionally rich sources of adult stem cells that regenerate muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and other musculoskeletal tissues.
We most often harvest stem cells from bone marrow, using a specialized hollow needle to withdraw a sample from your hip bone. After processing the sample to separate the stem cells, we inject them into your joint. The healing cells immediately go to work, regenerating the cells needed to alleviate your pain.
Precision Pain Care and Rehabilitation has two convenient locations in Richmond Hill – Queens and New Hyde Park – Long Island. Call the Queens office at (718) 215-1888, or (516) 419-4480 for the Long Island office, to arrange an appointment with our Interventional Pain Management Specialist, Dr. Jeffrey Chacko.
