Suffering from shoulder pain due to a rotator cuff tear, arthritis, sports injury, or another shoulder-related condition? Are you looking for an alternative to invasive shoulder surgery? If so, stem cells may be a good option for you.
Shoulder injuries are difficult to heal, simply because we need the use of our shoulders for every movement we make throughout our day. Often, this causes people with a shoulder problem like a torn rotator cuff to suffer from an injury that just won’t seem to heal. This is why, eventually, your doctor will likely recommend surgery to mitigate the pain caused by long-term damage.
But when it comes to shoulder surgery, there are a few important things to keep in mind. As with any major surgery, there are risks, and potential complications involved. These risks may include:
- Permanent Nerve Damage
- Stroke
- Heart Attack
- Blood Clots
- Post-Surgery Infections
Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that surgery on the shoulder will be successful. In some cases, the surgery fails. And even if the surgery is successful, there’s a chance that further operation will be needed if the ligament tears. The odds of side effects or surgery failing range between 1% to 10% – a number high enough to cause concern. And when you consider the risks of organ damage, heart attack, and stroke from opioids used to manage the pain, finding a different course of treatment than shoulder surgery looks like a more and more attractive option.
Stem Cell Therapy for Shoulder Injuries – An Effective Substitution for Surgery?
Stem cells are a special type of cell that can be drawn from your own body. Some of these stem cells have the potential to regenerate living tissue and transform into various other cells. Stem cells are full of nutrients and growth factors that, when injected into the site of an injury, release these nutrients and growth factors to help grow and heal your injured cells. So in the case of a shoulder problem, when your doctor injects stem cells into the site, those cells coach your tissue to regain health and restore.
As we age, our stem cell concentrations diminish, and as a result, our ability to recover from injury tends to wane. When your body’s healing system can’t overcome the effects of an injury, traditional Western medicine often uses surgical intervention. Its goal is to restore a patient’s quality of life (read: stop your pain), but it doesn’t do anything to fix the injury. This is why, besides being dangerous, the efficacy of surgeries is erratic at best. So, is there a better solution to shoulder damage than surgery?
This is where injections of stem cell concentrations have great potential to replace shoulder surgery as the preferred method of treating shoulder injuries like torn tendons, pinched nerves, damaged rotator cuffs, etc. The procedure is simple, minimally-invasive, extremely safe, and has the potential to truly heal the cause of your shoulder pain, which is why more doctors in regenerative medicine are adopting this treatment for should tears and arthritis.
Stem Cells Supercharge Your Body’s Healing Abilities
The goal of stem cell treatments is to give your body an influx of extra healing resources to the injury site, boosting the body’s healing process so it can overcome the damage to the shoulder. As an alternative to having surgery on the shoulder, the implications of successful stem cell treatment offer far more than simple pain relief. When the stem cells enter your body, they search for where your body is signaling that it needs help to heal. They migrate to these areas, cling to blood vessels nearby, and secrete nutrients and growth factors to coach your local cells to heal. They also wake up local tissue dormant stem cells to grow new tissue.
When using stem cells for a shoulder injury, patients should expect gradual improvement over the course of a few weeks, and even up to a year. The reason for this is that it can take your body a considerable amount of time to repair living tissue. Most patients report positive results after a few weeks, with improvement being seen more with every passing month. In some cases, more than one stem cell treatment may be needed to heal from more severe injuries. With a 50%+ success rate in relieving pain after just one treatment – a percentage that increases sharply with each subsequent treatment – stem cell therapy outdoes shoulder surgery on a restorative, biological and functional level.
A Cincinnati Doctor in Regenerative Medicine Offering Alternatives to Surgery for Pain
Dr. Blatman has over 30 years of practice in the field of regenerative therapies for chronic illnesses and pain and has seen the promise of stem cells as a replacement for shoulder surgery firsthand in countless patients. With additional treatment options for torn tendons, cuffs, arthritic joints, musician’s injuries, etc., such as platelet-rich-plasma treatments, prolotherapy, medical marijuana, trigger point injections, and more, shoulder surgery is not your only option – not by a long shot. Questions? Give our Cincinnati health and wellness center a call, and find a better way to treat your hurting shoulder.