Bone Marrow Cell Therapy Q & A

What are Bone Marrow Cells?

Throughout your life, you depend on the regenerative ability of adult stem cells to heal your body. Bone Marrow cells have the remarkable ability to continuously self-replicate and create new cells. Each new precursor cell can receive signals to develop into the types of cells needed to rebuild and repair injured tissues.

What is Bone Marrow Cell therapy?

Bone marrow cell therapy is a treatment in which Dr. Penhollow injects a concentrated dose of growth factors, anti-inflammatory mediators, and progenitor bone marrow cells sourced from your own bone marrow at the site of your damaged tissues.

After the bone marrow cells are injected, they do their natural job of calming inflammation and promoting healing. The goals are a reduction in pain and improvement in function.

What type of cell therapy might I receive?

Dr. Penhollow specializes in autologous Regenerative Orthobiologics, which means that the regenerative cells come from your own bone marrow. This type of cell therapy, called bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC), is exempt from FDA requirements because it is using your own cells and they are minimally manipulated.

Using a FDA-authorized bone marrow collection system and centrifuge, and using a superior technique for harvesting the cells sets Dr. Penhollow apart from practitioners who use low-quality collection systems or who use non-FDA approved amniotic or placental tissues.

BMAC contains a mix of hematopoietic bone marrow cells, mesenchymal bone marrow cells (MSCs), growth factors, and immune cells called cytokines. Of these, MSCs are the one of the most important components.

MSCs are used to treat orthopedic conditions because they are the precursor cells for new muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and bone.

How can I determine the quality of my Bone Marrow Cell therapy?

The results you achieve are directly related to the quality and quantity of the cells in your BMAC. Optimal healing occurs only when the injectate contains a large amount of concentrated, living MSC and other anti-inflammatory mediators and growth factors.

Dr. Penhollow’s expertise in harvesting your BMAC ensures optimal quality. But she doesn’t leave anything to chance. She always sends a small sample of your BMAC to a lab, where they verify the number of these cells and their viability.

How are Bone Marrow Cells obtained?

Dr. Penhollow performs an outpatient procedure to harvest bone marrow from your hip. She applies several levels of a local anesthetic, numbing multiple layers of your skin and the outer layer of your hip bone.

Then Dr. Penhollow uses a specialized needle to go through your skin and into the hip bone, where she can withdraw some of your bone marrow. She processes the bone marrow to concentrate the MSCs, then uses real-time imaging to guide the injection and precisely target the site of your injured tissues.

What conditions are treated with bone marrow cell therapy?

Many musculoskeletal injuries and diseases respond well to bone marrow aspirate concentrate cell therapy. Dr. Penhollow frequently recommends BMAC injections to treat the pain and inflammation of soft tissue ligament, tendon, and meniscus injuries, degenerative joint and disc disease, and arthritis of the neck and back.

A few examples of the conditions bone marrow cell therapy targets include: 

• Arthritis
• Tendonitis
• Tennis elbow
• Meniscus tears
• Rotator cuff injuries
• Sacroiliac joint dysfunction
• Herniated discs
• Spinal stenosis
• Radiculopathy
• Degenerative disc disease
• Ligament, tendon, and muscle injuries
  
  

Bone marrow cell therapy can also reduce inflammation and promote the healing of many conditions that cause shoulder, hip, ankle, elbow, hand, feet, lower back, neck, and knee pain.

If you have questions about bone marrow cell therapy, call Precision Regenerative Medicine or schedule an appointment online today.