Knee pain is perhaps the most common type of joint pain. Knee pain is incredibly hard to ignore. It can be localized to one specific area or spread throughout your knee joint when you bend it, stretch it, or put weight on it.
Once you start experiencing severe pain and stiffness, instability, or loss of mobility that affects your daily life and activities, you need to see a medical professional. But what should you do if your doctor recommends knee replacement surgery?
Regenerative Medicine Can Help Your Knee Issue
A knee replacement surgery, also called knee arthroplasty, is an operative procedure that repairs damage from degenerative conditions such as arthritis.
Though it can be effective for far-gone cases, there can be complications, such as:
- Blood clots
- Pulmonary embolism
- Wound infection
- Nerve and other tissue damage
- Bone fracture
- Dislocation
With complications like these, it makes sense to look at all of your options, including non-surgical alternatives.
Regenerative medicine is an exciting new set of knee procedures. When tissues such as ligaments, tendons, and cartilage in your knees are injured, your body uses its healing ability to rebuild the damaged tissue. We treat damage and injury by enhancing your body’s regenerative capabilities.
Regenerative medicine uses innovative technologies to augment ingrained bodily processes for dealing with dead and damaged cells.
Stem Cells for Knees
The joints in your knees go through a normal cycle of damage and repair during your lifetime. As you age, your body’s process to repair this damage declines. Injections of Wharton’s jelly-derived mesenchymal stem cells and growth factors will travel to the injured tissue and commence repairs. These are young, healthy, potent cells sourced from birth tissue, which is abundant in therapeutic components and properties for healing.
Stem cells act as replacement cells. They change into the required cell type to heal your knees, such as tendon or cartilage, which makes them ideal for treating musculoskeletal injuries. Knee pain may result from an injury, an infection, or a complication of a medical condition.
But mesenchymal stem cells have the ability to do the following:
- Self-replicate
- Reduce inflammation
- Differentiate into multiple tissue cell types
- Fight cell death
Regenerative medicine also includes PRP treatments. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) involves drawing a small amount of your blood and spinning it in a specialized device to segregate the platelets from the plasma and other blood cells. The platelets are then highly concentrated and reconstituted with your blood plasma.
This PRP solution is rich in materials that actively fight and heal injuries every day. Now, we’ve heightened your chances for healing. Platelet-rich plasma is then infused into your injured knees to stimulate healing and regeneration.
Platelets have long been known for their amazing ability to clot blood for wound healing. Now medical researchers have discovered the therapeutic benefits of PRP for healing and tissue regeneration for effective pain relief and restoring proper function of many bodily systems.
Our doctor provides alternatives to knee replacement surgery at our Charleston, Illinois clinic. If you wish to learn more about natural alternatives to knee surgery, please contact us to set up a complimentary consultation.
