Non-Surgical Treatment Options
Musculoskeletal degeneration and complications from injuries have become more prevalent as people live longer and increasingly participate in more rigorous athletic and recreational activities. At the Center for Spine & Orthopedics, we strive to offer our patients a wide array of non-surgical treatment options, including orthobiologics, such as platelet injection therapy. Platelet injections have been around since the mid 1990’s and is the most common type of orthobiologics as well as the most studied.
What is orthobiologics?
Orthobiologics refers to the use of the body’s repair cells or platelet injections to repair and heal damaged tissues. The body’s repair cells occur naturally in bone marrow and fat tissue and can be harvested from your own living cells or from someone else’s cells in the case of placental embryonic cells (typically a pregnant mother’s cord blood following child birth).
The body’s repair cells are most commonly harvested from a patient’s bone marrow or fat, both of which require a surgery center and anesthesia. The use of the body’s repair cells harvested from placental tissue involves an in-office procedure not requiring a surgery center or anesthesia. Platelet injections involve an approximately 30-minute in-office procedure without anesthesia.
