Are you still suffering from chronic hip pain because you become anxious at the thought of undergoing surgery? If so, regenerative medicine may be right for you. Here’s how regenerative medicine may be able to help you avoid hip surgery:
Regenerative medicine, as the name suggests, causes regeneration of degenerated, or damaged, tissue. To stimulate healing, advanced and innovative procedures harness your body’s natural healing ability and concentrate it at the injury site.
Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) therapy: Platlet-rich plasma is obtained by centrifuging a small quantity of blood drawn out of your arm, separating the platelets from the rest of the blood. These concentrated cells are then injected into the hip joint or site of injury under ultrasound guidance. The PRP contains growth factors that, at amplified levels, have the ability to stimulate regrowth of injured tissue and speed up the healing process.
Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate (BMAC) therapy: This treatment taps into the ability of undifferentiated cells within bone marrow to stimulate the repair of damaged tissue. First, bone marrow is harvested from your pelvic bone under anesthesia. Then, the bone marrow is concentrated on site, creating injectable BMAC. Finally, the concentrated stem cells are injected into the affected area.
Regenerative medicine procedures can be easily performed in the outpatient setting and have hardly any side effects as the PRP or BMAC are obtained from your own body. There may be a little soreness at the injection site which will go away by itself. You may start to notice improvement in hip function and reduced hip pain within a few days; however, you can expect to improve for weeks following the injection. The full benefit of these therapies is often experienced 4-6 weeks after treatment.
Dr. Ajay C. Lall is a dual fellowship trained orthopaedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine and hip arthroscopy. He is an avid clinical researcher with numerous presentations and publications at international academic meetings and within top peer-reviewed journals. The doctors at the American Hip Institute® have been global leaders in Hip Arthroscopy and Robotic Surgery for over a decade. While some would call this excellence, we simply call it the American Hip Institute standard.
