Stem Cells? Oh my achin' back!

Any back pain/surgery sufferer will tell you that they would happily endure any number of horse-sized needles to have reduced back pain and yeah, it is that bad. Cross your fingers that this method will prove to be both safe and effective, as well as neatly silencing the stem cell god-squad.


"Learn About Stem Cells. I've seen the future of back surgery firsthand. And it looked to me, from behind my surgical mask, as if a woman's bare behind was doing much of the work. Up close, huddled inside the Centeno-Schultz Pain Center, I joined a team of M.Ds., a Ph.D., and two nurses to witness orthopedic history in vivo: an adult stem cell transplant to help bones and joints grow anew.

In the midst of the huddle, Centeno, the back- and neck-pain specialist, is plunging a needle that looks big enough to use on a horse deep into the hip bone of a 54-year-old weekend athlete and skier who's been forced to the sidelines by injury and long-term lower-back pain. The patient is tired of pain pills but wary of major surgery. Instead she's undergoing one of the first ASC orthopedic transplants in the nation.

The harvested stem cells will be used to grow millions of new ones that will be implanted in her back to spur and regenerate more youthful, healthy joint tissue -- if all goes as planned in this part of an ongoing study approved by a medical research institutional review board, that is. So far, at least, it has. Early MRI pictures of related procedures have shown impressive growth of regenerative tissue. And there's even better news: By using the patient's own stem cells, the surgical team avoids the ethical debate over using embryonic tissue for research purposes."
-Resources: http://body.aol.com/news/articles/_a/five-operations-you-dont-want-to-get/20070730110909990002