My Medical Practice
Enhancing Healing After Repair
In addition to my entrepreneurial ventures, I maintain a full-time medical practice. The practice integrates injection-based Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy techniques into a traditional non-operative orthopedic and sports medicine approach. In addition, my day-to-day involves collaborating with surgeons to integrate biologic therapies into their surgical techniques in an effort to enhance healing after repair.
Sports related injuries can be the result of an acute trauma, like a ligament tear, or the result of repetitive lower level strain, creating inflammation and scarring in a tendon for example. The cumulative effect of long-term strain creates degenerative conditions like arthritis.
Often acute injuries don’t heal completely and result in ongoing pain, poor performance and higher potential for re-injury. In this situation, the goal of biologic therapies is to support the healing process to ensure its completion and prevent a problem from becoming chronic.
With chronic problems like arthritis, the body is unable to re-establish normal tissue, creating a progressive cycle of pain, inflammation and poor function. Biologic therapies in this scenario promote control over the inflammation response and based on early data, the potential to stimulate repair. While mechanisms and capacity for regenerating tissue is still incompletely understood, PRP and BMC preparations release anti-inflammatory proteins over time to minimize the damage occurring from the prolonged inflammation, producing a pain-relieving effect. This is important in more advanced arthritic conditions, where there is little to no potential for repair or regeneration. In these types of problems, biologic therapies can help to relieve pain for longer durations despite an inability to reverse the process based on the current state of the technology.
As with everything in medicine, good care starts with a review of history, physical examination and diagnostic testing to establish an accurate diagnosis.
All patients have to be carefully screened to ensure that biologics are safe to use, that the problem has a reasonable potential to respond favorably to treatment and that utilization of biologics is in compliance with FDA guidelines and expectations. The following are general conditions where PRP or BMC could be considered for use.
Knee
– Arthritis
– Tendon tear or chronic tendonitis
– Partial ligament tear (acute or chronic)
– Meniscus tear or degeneration
Hip
– Arthritis
– Labral tear
– Bursitis
Shoulder
– Arthritis
– Rotator cuff (tendon) tear or chronic tendonitis
– Labral tear
– Bursitis
Foot/Ankle
– Arthritis
– Ligament tear (severe or chronic ankle sprain)
– Tendon tear or chronic tendonitis (Achilles)
Elbow
– Tendon tear or chronic tendonitis (tennis elbow)
– Arthritis
Spine
– Lumbar (low back) disc injury
– Arthritis