WHY do we do ORTHOBIOLOGICS?

Dr. Joshua John-Ram Schacter explains why his orthopedic practice uses PRP and stem cell injections instead of surgery for ligament, tendon, and joint injuries. Surgery means months of downtime and rehab with real failure risk. Regenerative treatments cost patients out-of-pocket but carry less risk and let people get back to work faster.
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Hello. I am a board certified orthopedic surgeon, as you know, and we do a fair amount of surgery still. We were just in surgery all day yesterday and I met a young man last week who really brought the reason why we do regenerative therapies to the front of my mind. This young gentleman is a C, double A division one athlete. He's a fantastic football player and he's had some issues. He had a hip surgery, it didn't go well. He had to have a revision hip surgery. And so now the young man is 18 months out from playing his sport, the thing that he loves, that gives him value. He's not able to do that, barely able to walk or run. And he still is rehabbing after this second major surgery. And that brings me to the subject, why would we want to do regenerative therapies? Why would we want to do something that's non surgical, that can buy you a time or even heal your orthopedic injury? That's what PRP or stem cell can do. We can treat ligament injuries, we can treat joint pain, we can treat bone tendon strains, we can do all kinds of things with regenerative therapies that lie outside of the surgical realm. Once we cut, we can't ever take that back. Say you come to us with a rotator cuff that doesn't need surgery. We can treat that with a regenerative therapy and possibly prevent you from ever having to have a surgery. Surgery creates incredible downtime. You miss amazing amounts of work. You have all of this pain. You have to do physical therapy. You have risks of blood clot and infection and joint stiffness and failure of your repair. We see over and over and over in orthopedic surgery failures. We see over and over in orthopedic surgery patients who have delayed return to their normal life activities. And so for me, that's really driven me to find a new avenue for our patients to be able to relieve this pain, to be able to treat these injuries with a natural method that's not going to injure you. Steroid injections damage your tendons. PRP and stem cell injections make them healthier. We are actually improving the health of your joint. If the goal is to get you back to the things that you love and to prevent you from having to have major impacts in your life like a surgery with the complications and risks that are associated these painful procedures, then we want to make sure that we're doing those things. Now. Insurance doesn't cover what we do, and that's a major issue from some of our patients. But if you think about the amount of time that you have to be out of work from a knee replacement, some patients end up being out of work after a knee replacement for up to a year. Think about how much money that you lose. And so even if you do have a procedure which is paid for by insurance, oftentimes our co pays are so high, our deductibles are so high, they can be thousands and thousands of dollars. And even when you pay your cop, your insurance still doesn't completely cover you, so that you have overages in physical therapy, where oftentimes you'll have to pay $100 or more per therapy visit. And so if we can do something that has no downtime, that has very little risk of complication, that's healthier and better for your body, then why would we not explore that option? Why would it not be at least something that we want to talk about? We can use your own body's ability to heal itself. We can take that, we can magnify that. We can use that in your joints, we can use that on your ligamen, we can use that on your tendons. And it makes perfect sense to do that for somebody who wants to avoid debilitating and lengthy, painful rehab processes after major surgery. And so if you want to get back to your life, if you want to do something that's natural, that has very low risk, and that can bring you to the peak of wellness and to the back into the idea of being an active, vital person, then I urge you, come and talk to us. Let's talk about these novel treatments so that we can get you back on the track and back to feeling better.
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