Regenerative Therapy
Stem Cell Therapy
Stem Cell Therapy is an alternative drug-free therapy that uses the pet’s own adult stem cells to regenerate and repair damaged tissue. Stem cell therapy is currently approved to treat osteoarthritis, fractures, and ligament/tendon damage but also has many compassionate care uses. This procedure can usually be performed in one or more daily visits to our hospital and in just a few weeks you will start to see results that will astonish you and can last for years.
Stem Cell Therapy requires a minor surgical procedure to harvest the fat where the dormant stem cells are stored. Once the fat is harvested it is processed to extract the adult stem cells within. The adult stem cells are then activated and injected back into the pet. By activating these cells and injecting them into specific locations in the body we can create a healing process from within, that even drugs cannot replicate. This therapy is a jump into the future of veterinary medicine and we are proud to be a part of it. If you would like more information on stem cell therapy please contact our office.
Compassionate Care Uses for Stem Cell Therapy
- Urinary Incontinence
- Auto Immune Polyarthritis
- Degenerative Myelopathy
- Pancreatitis
- IBD
- Diabetes
- Chronic Active Hepatitis
Stem Cell Banking & Early Harvesting
An animal’s stem cells can be harvested at any time in their life and stored for later use. It is recommended that you harvest adipose tissue when your pet is spayed or neutered and bank it until they need it. If your pet is already spayed or neutered, the stem cells can also be harvested during almost any other anesthetic procedure including a dental or mass removal.
It is best to harvest the cells when the animal is young because as they age the number of viable stem cells, within the adipose tissue, decreases. This is not to say that older pets do not have enough cells to treat the conditions they may suffer from, this just means you get more stem cells per gram of adipose from younger pets. For example, a 13-year-old dog treated in-clinic for osteoarthritis that banked cells after treatment had 17.7 million cells/g whereas a 1-year-old dog that harvested adipose during a spay procedure had 212.3 million cells/g. The 13-year-old dog was treated successfully for osteoarthritis and still had 7 doses of therapy left for later use. This will most likely be more than enough to last his lifetime, but the younger dog has 12 doses of therapy that are 4x as potent and he will be able to use this throughout her life, treating many of the most common conditions we see in our pets.
By banking stem cells you are buying your pet a unique life insurance policy. If your pet is young, by the time they are aging and starting to develop problems, many of them will be able to be cured, using the stem cells you harvested when they were a puppy. This therapy will allow us in the future of veterinary medicine to provide our pets with an extended quality of life, not just an extended quantity of life.
- Spinal Cord Trauma
- Renal Failure
- Peripheral Nerve Regeneration
- Retinal Disease
- Uveitis
- Atopy
- Glaucoma