It’s an exciting time to be in medicine as we move away from interventional therapies and surgeries that work around your body. Instead, we’re now focusing on working with your body to rebuild and repair injuries through regenerative orthopedics.
Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román is a sports medicine and musculoskeletal injury specialist at No Mercy Sports Medicine who prides himself on helping patients to stay healthy and remain active. A big part of this effort includes our exciting regenerative medicine treatments, such as stem cell therapy and platelet-rich plasma treatments.
Here, we look at how stem cell therapy can help you overcome tendon damage and pain, which is common among athletes and nonathletes alike.
Tendons are strong soft tissues in your body that connect bone to muscle to help you move, so they’re very active tissues.
Most tendinopathies are the result of repetitive stress and overuse, which can lead to tiny tears in the tissue. This damage sets the stage for tendonitis — inflammation in your tendon that can lead to pain and loss of function.
Tendonitis can set the stage for partial or complete tears of the connective tissue if the tendon continues to weaken and doesn’t receive enough rest and time to heal.
Some common tendon injuries include:
This list isn’t complete, but it represents the more common injuries that we see at No Mercy Sports Medicine.
One of the frustrations with tendon injuries is that they heal at their own pace, and this pace often requires patience. But if you have a tendon problem in your ankle or in your shoulder, as examples, it can often be tough to give these areas the time and space they need to heal.
One of our goals with regenerative orthopedics is to accelerate your body’s natural healing process by gathering cellular reinforcements and redirecting them into your damaged tendons.
At the top of the list of healing resources are stem cells, which have the ability to become other cells. This ability allows your body to repair and heal tissues more easily with cells that can transition into what’s needed to rebuild.
In addition to their unique ability to become other cells, stem cells are also signal cells — when we introduce them into your damaged tissues, they immediately call for other stem cells to join the regenerative effort.
With our stem cell therapy, we first harvest your own stem cells, typically from your hip where we can aspirate these cells from your bone marrow. Once we have a concentration of your stem cells, we inject them into your damaged tendon.
Because our stem cell therapy relies on your own stem cells, your body readily accepts the treatment, and there’s no immune response.
Depending upon the extent of the tendonitis and tendon pain, Dr. Irizarry-Román may recommend one stem cell treatment or a series of treatments spaced out to allow time for the connective tissue to rebuild.
Over the following weeks, you should realize gradual results as your stem cells help to repair your weakened tendon and address your pain. We recommend that you take it easy on the damaged tendon while we work to heal it through regenerative orthopedics.
Between the boost in regenerative resources and some activity modification and rest on your end, we have every confidence that we can help heal tendonitis and tendon damage and get you moving again without pain.
To learn more about stem cell therapy for tendon issues, please contact No Mercy Sports Medicine in Miami, Florida, by calling 305-614-6757. You can also request an appointment anytime by sending us a message online.
