Regenerative medicine is a growing area of orthopedic treatment. Two orthopedic surgeons told Becker's what they found the most exciting about its development.
Ask Orthopedic Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to orthopedic surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting orthopedic care. We invite all orthopedic surgeon and specialist responses.
Next week's question: How will joint replacement surgical robots improve in the next 10 years?
Please send responses to Carly Behm at cbehm@beckershealthcare.com by 5 p.m. CDT Tuesday, Aug. 31.
Note: Responses were edited for style.
Question: What area of regenerative medicine holds the most promise for orthopedics?
Mihir Patel, MD. OrthoIndy (Indianapolis): Regenerative medicine is a truly exciting frontier in medicine. In orthopedics, bone graft implants and substitutes are helping patients return to normal activities. The implants can be used in index operations as well as revisions for a variety of orthopedic procedures including acute stress reactions, stress fractures not conducive to metal fixation, and subchondral procedures. The evolution of orthopedic implants from metal to plastic, and now bone is improving outcomes for patients and broadening our arsenal as surgeons to help patients heal. The bone graft substitutes are reducing comorbidities of graft harvesting. Additionally, they are adding to the value proposition for patients who may have difficulty healing bone defects, nonunions, and osteoporosis.
Much like advances in cancer therapies over the past decade, bone graft substitutes have the potential for personalized, targeted medicine for these diagnoses as biomarkers become more available to help clinicians really pinpoint at the molecular level why some heal more quickly than others. Finally, regenerative medicine includes mostly outpatient procedures with sterile kits that are easily transported, giving orthopedic surgeons the confidence in the manufacturing and sterilization process.
Jason Snibbe, MD. Snibbe Orthopedics (Los Angeles): I think the use of biologics from plasma and bone marrow have the most promise right now to help a variety of injuries in orthopedics. We are able to help people recover without surgery and use their own tissue to heal, specifically in labral tears of the hip and meniscus tears in the knee.