What is regenerative medicine?
Regenerative medicine is a medical category with treatments that help your tissues heal or regrow after significant damage. Your muscles, ligaments, tendons, and nerves can all accumulate damage from injuries or degeneration, which leads to chronic pain and mobility issues for many people.
If you have chronic pain, especially around a joint, regenerative treatment options can amplify or accelerate your body's natural healing processes. Each of these treatments can rebuild areas of damage to improve functioning and reduce pain or discomfort in a very natural, non-pharmaceutical way.
What can regenerative medicine treat?
Regenerative medicine has many applications because it’s low risk and effectively helps your cells and tissues heal on their own. As a pain management practice, Interventional Pain Consultants uses regenerative medicine to treat various types of injuries and degenerative tissue damage that cause long-lasting pain.
A few examples of painful injuries and conditions treatable with regenerative medicine are:
- Muscle and ligament strains
- Tendon tears
- Tendinitis
- Arthritis and other joint pain
Injuries like these tend to occur around joints, including the many small joints between vertebrae in your neck and back.
What are my options for regenerative medicine?
Interventional Pain Consultants offers evidence-based treatment options that can help your tissues regenerate. While regenerative medicine often comes after other attempts, like pain medicine or physical therapy, it can be a long-lasting solution that reduces or eliminates the need for surgery or ongoing medication use. Your options are:
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP)
PRP is an injectable liquid that comes from your blood. By isolating growth factor-rich platelets and plasma and re-injecting them into an injured region, you can enhance the natural healing process. Interventional Pain Consultants might use ultrasound imaging to guide the injections to the right place.
Stem cell therapy
Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can help work to rebuild tissue in damaged areas by generating new, healthy cells. When they reproduce, some specialize and become tissue, bone, or blood cells, while others produce more unspecialized stem cells.
Radiofrequency ablation (RFA)
Using the heat from radio waves, radiofrequency ablation is a procedure that can stop pain signals by damaging nerves. Thanks to your nerves’ ability to regenerate after damage with time, the nerves grow back. However, inhibiting the pain for some time with radiofrequency ablation allows your injury time to heal.
Regenerative medicine is already a successful option for many and has promising implications for future treatments. To learn more and see if you’re a good candidate, call Interventional Pain Consultants, or book online today.
