By Phillip Steele, MD RMSK CAQ Sports Medicine
Performance Injury Care & Sports Medicine
Hello from Dallas, Texas–home of the barbecue. I was invited to a regenerative medicine conference to meet the developers of a unique product that has what appears to be an amazing restorative potential. Not only did we talk in terms of regeneration of damaged tissue but now are discussing restoration of function. In past conferences we mainly focused on regeneration of injured tissue but some aspects of that science hasn’t been able to resolve some specific types of injuries. Although Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP), adipose derived stem cells and stem cells from umbilical cord blood have an amazing ability to help regenerate damaged tissue, scar tissue which can form during repetitive injury seems to get in the way of complete recovery. Whether you have scar tissue from surgery, trauma or infection your ability to completely recover is inhibited by the stiffness of scar tissue formation and poor vascular supply.
We have talked previously about Heavy Chain – Hyaluronic Acid (HC-HA PT3) in a past blog (on Oct, 19th) here in Dallas we are learning more about this important tissue matrix that is only found in umbilical cord tissue. Although placental tissue is packed with growth factors and cytokines, HC-HA PT3 packs a punch to stimulate mesenchymal stem cells to help with tissue recovery. It appears that in chronic injury (repetitive) the inflammatory cascade gets stuck in the ‘on position’, creating chronic pain and inflammatory tissue. This new product seems to stop chronic inflammation using this unique HC-HA that allows the normal healing process to resume.
Whether you’re suffering from chronic tendon injury, joint osteoarthritis, non-union fracture, non healing ulcers or skin infection, this product has an amazing potential to help you heal. Even in the setting of chronic nerve pain, this product seems to stop neuritis (nerve irritation) whether from entrapment or chronic stretch injury. It seems to even help with fibromyalgia type pain when used during trigger point injections into chronic pain generators. I saw case after medical case with amazing results. Many of the cases we reviewed were severe non-union fractures and horrible skin injury from trauma. These patients had multiple attempts to heal their injuries and finally someone would try Umbilical cord tissue to close the wound and prevent infection and allow the traumatized area to heal. Umbilical cord tissue can be used either as an injectable form or tissue sheet during surgery. Restorative function is the focus at this conference and we are excited to bring this product to Helena.