Regenerative Medicine, the Future of Pain Management
Skip the surgery and get back in the game naturally!
If you’re one of the millions of Americans who deal with debilitating pain on a daily basis, you’re no doubt familiar with traditional pain management treatments. You also probably know that these methods have numerous shortcomings, from their high costs to their low efficiency.
What you may not know is there’s a better way.
Whether you’re experiencing chronic pain such as osteoarthritis, acute pain as the result of an injury, or pain following surgery, regenerative medicine may be the solution you’ve been looking for. Stem cell therapy and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections are non-surgical and minimally invasive and help you not just relieve pain, but address its underlying causes.
Stem Cell Therapy vs Other Pain Management Options
The best way to understand why stem cell therapy is a superior form of pain management is to stack it up against other commonly prescribed pain management methods:
Surgery
Fatigue, appetite loss, bleeding and blood clots, and even pain are common side effects of invasive surgery, not to mention the risks of any anesthesia, antibiotics, or blood thinners used during and after the operation. What’s more, surgery irrevocably changes your body’s internal structure, sometimes for the worse. Even arthroscopic surgery can carry complications, such as swelling, stiffness, and progression of cartilage damage.
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Stem Cell Therapy
PRP and stem cell injections are minimally invasive and far less risky than surgery, as at most they involve local anesthetic and do not affect structural tissue. They’re also faster in both the application and the recovery than surgery. While full healing can take weeks or months, you’ll have far more mobility on a day-to-day basis after a stem cell treatment than you would after a knee replacement, for example.
Medication
The National Institutes of Health calls the misuse of and addiction to opioids, including prescription pain relievers, a “serious national crisis.” But risk of addiction is not the only drawback to medication for pain management. Side effects of opioids include constipation, nausea, vomiting, drowsiness or cloudy thinking, and inhibition of breathing signals coming from the brain. Over-the-counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can cause ulcers, stomach bleeding, or kidney damage if taken for long periods.
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Stem Cell Therapy
Stem cell therapy and PRP address pain and inflammation by encouraging biological repair of the degenerated or injured area, not just masking the problem. We don’t use opioids at Philadelphia PRP and Stem Cell Institute, and your physician will explain why you should stop taking NSAIDs around the time of your injection.
Interventional Pain Management
This includes various forms of treatment including corticosteroidal injections, drug infusions, and nerve blocks. If used for more than three months, corticosteroids can cause osteoporosis, diabetes, weight gain, hypertension, cataracts and glaucoma, and more. Some newer studies actually suggest that corticosteroids can speed up cartilage damage after only one injection. Nerve blocks may only last for a matter of hours, and like other forms of interventional pain management, don’t treat the issue at a cellular level.
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Stem Cell Therapy
Again, regenerative medicine is just that: regenerative. It doesn’t just inhibit pain signaling for a short term, it addresses the cause of pain by promoting new cell growth and biological healing.
Conditions We Treat
Knee
Hip
Foot & Ankle
Back & Spine
Shoulder
Elbow
