I spent this past week at a regenerative medicine conference. What is regenerative medicine, you ask? Regenerative medicine is a relatively new branch of medicine dedicated to healing the body using it's own innate properties. There are many different types of regenerative treatments, including prolotherapy, platelet rich plasma, and stem cells. Regenerative medicine is an up and coming field of medicine, and it is growing rapidly. As society becomes less and less comfortable with taking typical medications that are prescribed, more and more people are turning to natural forms of treatment and healing. Many people want actual solutions to their problems, as opposed to treatments for their symptoms. You may think that this is obvious: who wouldn't want a solution to their medical problem? Well, the truth is that many people don't want to wait for a healing effect to occur, and prefer to just "feel better quickly" with the intent of possibly addressing the actual problem "once they feel better." As you can probably guess, once a patient feels better, they tend to forget about the original problem at hand, and thus it rarely gets "fixed".
Just like after a woman has a baby and it takes time to lose the baby weight and for the body to return to it's pre-pregnancy state, in regenerative medicine, there are no quick fixes. In using regenerative techniques, a patient must wait weeks, or even months, before they will see significant results. Regenerative medicine physicians aim to use the body's innate healing capabilities to help promote healing within individuals. These treatments are being used in many fields of medicine, from orthopedics and rheumatology, to pulmonary and cardiac medicine alike.The specific conference that I attended this weekend was about regenerative medicine in orthopedics, specifically. Many physicians gave stimulating lectures on the many applications for stem cells and other regenerative techniques. During the entire length of the conference, all I could think of was, "I wonder what that treatment would look like if I could actually quantify the net treatment benefit with Treatment Scores?" I spent many hours of the lectures just writing down specific studies that I could go back and use for our STAR™ Blocks. It is such an exciting time for regenerative medicine, as the studies that are coming out daily impact how we practice medicine every day.
Though I have not yet done so since the conference, please see some of my previous posts on Plasma Rich Platelets, stem cells, or prolotherapy in order to get a good idea about the efficacy of those treatments. And check back to our blog in a few weeks to see newly emerging statistics and research on regenerative medicine procedures that are being performed on a regular basis. See the disclaimers below.
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