What Can Stem Cells Do for Muscle Injuries?
Muscle injuries are extremely common in sports and physical activity. These injuries often result in pain as well as the inability to participate in practice or competitions. Common muscle injuries include tears, strains, and contusions or bruising. These injuries can occur because of trauma or because of overuse. Muscle injuries are painful, and take a long time to heal. Some muscle injuries never heal completely and leave some remaining weaknesses. These injuries keep you away from the sport or activity that you love and enjoy. Some patients require rehabilitation, steroid injections, and surgery to repair damaged tissue.
What Can Stem Cells Do for Muscle Injuries?
Innovations Medical gets stem cells from the patient’s own fat. About 3 tablespoons of fat are harvested under local anesthesia using a special syringe to liposuction the fat. The fat is then processed to separate the stem cells from the regular fat cells. Once separated, the stem cells are an injection into the affected tissue and given in combination with intravenous deployment. See our blogs Understanding Adipose-Derived Stem Cells and What are Stem Cells?
Many of our patients with muscle injuries see improvement in just a few days. These improvements include reduced pain and increased range of motion and mobility. Patients gradually continue to improve while stem cells help to heal damaged tissue. Some sports injuries require a second deployment, 3 to 6 months after treatment, to further improvements or regain benefits lost since initial treatment.
Who Is a Good Candidate for Stem Cells for Muscle Injuries?
Almost any patient that has a muscle injury that is not healing well may be a candidate for stem cell therapy. Patients must not have a medical problem like active cancer or infection that would prevent therapy. Also, persons on anti-coagulants (blood thinners) may need to stop or adjust them before stem cell therapy. Ideal candidates are those who have failed to respond to standard treatment such as rest and rehab. Those desiring more rapid healing than standard medical treatment can provide are also good candidates.
What Is the Recovery Like for Stem Cells for Muscle Injuries?
Recovery is typically minimal. Some mild bruising and swelling may occur at the site where the fat is harvested. This can last for 1-2 weeks. Our patients receive a minor pain reliever for post-op pain, but it is usually unnecessary. The process of giving back the cells may have some bruising at the IV site, but otherwise, no recovery is necessary except the continued recovery from the injury.
Cost of Stem Cell Treatments
The cost of the initial treatment ranges from $5,000 to $10,000. The range in cost is dependent on the complexity of delivering the cells back to you. For example, spine conditions require multiple physicians to deliver the cells back to your body and this requires an increase in cost as multiple doctors are involved in the procedure. For many people the initial treatment is all that is needed; however, for some conditions, subsequent treatments may be required and these are done at a reduced fee.
Innovations Medical provides Stem Cell Therapy procedures at both our Dallas and Fort Worth practice locations. Call (214) 643-8665 or request a consultation to learn more.