Elbow Injuries
Stem Cell And PRP Treatments

Stem cells are usually harvested from a patient’s healthy fat tissue or bone marrow. To harvest PRP, we draw your blood and then concentrate the platelets. We then precisely inject the stem cells and concentrated platelets into the damaged area, and both orthobiologics go to work to help repair the damaged tissues.

We typically use both stem cells and PRP when treating patients. However, there are times when we use just PRP. Every treatment plan varies according to the individual needs of our patients.

We work with two different types of cells. The first type of cell comes from your own healthy fat tissue and bone marrow. These are defined as autologous, as they come from your own body.

There are many living stem cells in these tissues (much more in fat than in bone marrow). The fat is typically obtained from women in the lateral thighs and buttocks. In men, it is typically obtained from the flank or abdomen.

The second type of cell does not come from your body. These cells are allogeneic cells and include placental, amniotic or umbilical cord tissue. These tissues contain healthy growth factors that boost your body’s natural healing mechanisms. Typically discarded, these tissues are gathered safely and ethically and no babies are harmed in the process.

Yes. All of these tools are available to you. There are pros and cons with every tissue that we use, but the advantage of using these products is that they are available in a bottle and we don’t have to harvest tissue from you.

The primary negative aspect of these tissues is cost. If we need a high volume of cells for a particular procedure, it’s usually financially impractical to use only these tissues.

The second negative with these tissues is the lack of living stem cells. We have independently tested many of these products and have never been able to grow any of them in the lab. While these allogenic materials have other living cells and growth factors that are highly beneficial, our tests indicate that the stem cells are not able to reproduce and are likely not alive. That is why we typically use these cells in conjunction with autologous cells (PRP, fat, and bone marrow stem cells).

It’s important to note that the amniotic, placental, umbilical tissue and exosomes are not embryonic cells. Embryonic cells are from embryos (or babies) and the amniotic, placental and umbilical tissue is typically discarded after delivery.

Instead of discarding this allogenic material, the amniotic, placental and umbilical tissues we use are gathered safely and ethically. We only use products from companies that have the highest standards and these tissues are repeatedly tested to ensure that there are no known pathogens in the samples, including various infectious agents.

We recommend that you familiarize yourself with these tissues prior to your visit so that we can help you make an informed decision regarding your treatment options. To do this, please look through the rest of our website and research other sites, as well.

For years, the medical establishment has put an emphasis on reducing inflammation and has employed liberal use of anti-inflammatory drugs, usually in the form of NSAIDs, like ibuprofen and naproxen, or steroids. We now know that inhibiting your body’s natural inflammatory response prevents repair cells from reaching your injury.

Reliance on NSAIDs can actually cause further injury by masking pain and allowing further damage to injured tissues. Our targeted orthobiologics treatments are designed to do the opposite of overused NSAIDs. These treatments don't block inflammation - instead, they provoke a healing inflammatory response to increase the number of repair cells in the injured area.

We highly stress that you do not use NSAID’s during your recovery process.
In addition, smoking significantly hinders your body’s healing response. To achieve the best possible outcome from your procedure, it is best to discontinue smoking six months prior to your procedure.

To learn more, read our blog Not All Inflammation is Bad: The Benefits of Inflammation in The Healing Process.