I prefer to call them biological therapies, since regenerative as such is not the right term. They are adjuvant therapies, i.e., facilitating therapies to improve the biological environment of an injury, enhance its recovery and promote the healing of the pathology we are treating.
Nowadays we have more and more tools in this line, the ones we use most in traumatology are mesenchymal cells or stem cells, monocytes, platelet growth factors.
How are they applied?
They can be used in different ways. In the joints, tendons and ligaments by direct infiltration under local anesthesia. In our work environment we have advanced imaging technologies, such as ultrasound and X-ray machines.
It helps us to locate the exact point of the lesion where we want to treat with the required biological therapy.
For which pathologies can they be useful?
Fundamentally, in articular cartilage injuries such as knee, ankle and hip:
- Tendon injuries in the shoulder
- Achilles tendon in the ankle
- Epicondylitis
- Knee tendon injuries
Can this technique be used with all types of patients and what are its advantages?
Potentially it can be used in all types of patients, it does not generate tissue rejection, as it is a product obtained from the patient himself.
It is relatively simple depending on the therapy we are going to apply: we can obtain mesenchymal cells from bone marrow, abdominal fat or through a simple blood extraction to obtain platelet growth factors.