What is Regenerative Medicine?
Harnessing the Power of Your Own Biologic Media
Imagine capturing your body’s intrinsic healing properties to restore the health of damaged tissues. Regenerative medicine applies pioneering, yet scientifically sound techniques to harvest, process and exploit your body’s essential healing elements, including stem cells, growth factors and bio-scaffolding. No, not embryonic stem cells – your body’s own stem cells.
Regenerative medicine is an up-and-coming area of medical care that deals with the process of replacing, engineering, or regenerating human cells or tissues to restore or reestablish normal function. Rather than simply managing symptoms, the primary focus of regenerative medicine is to provide treatments that help diseased and/or damaged tissues to heal.
PRP therapy
PRP therapy uses injections containing a concentration of the patient’s own platelets to accelerate the healing of injured joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons. It combines your body’s natural ability to heal itself with the latest in medical and scientific technologies. When you incur an injury, your body uses healing properties in your blood to stop the bleeding and repair the damage.
The healing properties found in your blood include platelets, growth factors, and specialized proteins. At STAR Health, the PRP we deploy (that results from processing a sample of your own blood) contains a high concentration of these healing properties.
Stem cell therapy
Stem cell therapy is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. Stem cells are the cells in the body that transform into specialized cells on demand based on your body’s needs. Bone marrow and fat are two sites in our bodies with an abundance of mesenchymal stem cells. These mesenchymal stem cells can convert into the specialized cells that are used to repair injured tendons, cartilage, and ligaments. Most importantly mesenchymal stem cells have tremendous signaling capabilities to recruit a multitude of powerful healing elements from your immune system. Again, these are not derived from a fetus or embryo. STAR Health uses your own tissue or biologic media. We do not use embryonic stem cells.
What conditions benefit from regenerative medicine?
Dr. Fortin uses regenerative medicine to help heal diseased and injured tissue. Some conditions that benefit from regenerative medicine include:
What can I expect during regenerative medicine treatments?
At STAR Health, regenerative medicine is an outpatient procedure. Dr. Fortin and his nursing staff begin by harvesting the blood, bone marrow, or fat needed to create your PRP or stem cell therapy. Using image-guided technology, he will then inject the PRP or stem cells directly into the injured joint, disc, tendon or nerve sheath, or diseased tissue.
How long does it take to get results from regenerative medicine?
It is common for patients to experience an increase in discomfort for up to 10 days after their regenerative medicine treatments. However, most patients report that their pain is eased, and their mobility has improved within three days to a week.
To achieve an optimal outcome you will need a rehabilitation or physical therapy program that STAR Health custom tailors to your condition. This process typically takes 6-8 weeks to ensure profound relief of your symptoms and restoration of function.
While many patients only need one regenerative medicine treatment to see the benefits, some may need two or three treatments. Dr. Fortin will advocate for a specific number of treatments based on your diagnosis and personal health needs.
To learn more about regenerative medicine and how it can help you heal, call STAR Health today or schedule an appointment online.