Stem cell treatment offers new hope for pets that experience painful osteoarthritis or who experience poor healing of bone, tendon, and ligament injuries. Vet-Stem therapy can even help pets that, so far, have been unresponsive to other treatment modalities. Vet-Stem treatment is obtainable through a convenient onsite program in which Animal Specialty and Emergency Hospital’s boardcertified surgeons perform this procedure on a referral basis.

This service is rapidly gaining popularity and demand. As client-driven industry improvements continue to grow, regenerative cell therapy is a rapidly-evolving and refined treatment option. Through regenerative medicine, we can offer pets improved length and quality of life by restoring, maintaining and enhancing tissue function.

Regenerative medicine seeks to develop functional cell, tissue and organ substitutes to repair, replace or enhance biological function that has been lost due to injury, disease or aging. Major indications for stem cell therapy include current unsatisfactory therapy for degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis, and diminished recovery of bone, tendon and ligament trauma. Goals include the maximization of strength, range of motion and quality of life with the concurrent reduction of scarring, pain or future disease development or progression.

Stem cells operate by a variety of mechanisms, producing growth factors and providing antiinflammatory effects, tissue differentiation properties, migration to injury sites and modulation of the immune system. The greatest harvest of stem cells is generally obtained from adipose (fat) tissue. Fat is easily accessible, easily (often unfortunately) renewable and contains a high number and variety of healing cells. Safety is maximized, with an animal’s own fat providing a very low rejection potential and low disease transmission likelihood. It also allows a very rapid turnaround with regenerative stem cells returning to our facility 48 hours post-collection. Common fat harvest regions include intra-scapular, inguinal and thoracic sites.

Harvested adipose tissue is processed to provide fresh cell treatment with any excess cells being banked for potential future use. On return to the clinic, these cells are injected locally and/or intravenously into a variety of sites including elbow, shoulder, hip and knee joints. Both pet owners and veterinarians report mild to marked improvement in lameness examination scores after treatment with stem cell therapy!

We are primarily utilizing this therapy for the treatment of chronic osteoarthritis; however, it is also gaining increasing popularity as an adjunct to orthopedic surgery to speed healing and improve overall operative results. Stem cell collection is easily incorporated into a standard pre-surgical work-up and its administration is easily and quickly performed post-operatively.

If you would like to learn more about regenerative stem cell therapy for your pet, please ask your regular veterinarian for a referral to see Dr. Lawrence or Dr. Ruddle.