Knee surgery transformed by stem-cell treatment: it could halve need for knee replacements, doctor says
- Doctors take stem cells from patient and inject them in their knee to grow new cartilage, avoiding the need for knee replacement surgery
- Arthritis sufferers as old as 89 have benefited from the treatment, used so far only in UK, India and Korea, which is cheaper and quicker than a knee implant
Dharmendra Kumar’s mother, 58-year-old Lalitha Mehta from Chennai, suffered from arthritis, but was too old for traditional knee-replacement surgery. He went online, where he found out about two doctors – Dr V. Thirumal Selvan and Dr S. H. Jaheer Hussain – who were also in Chennai.
After training in the UK, they had introduced a groundbreaking technique using stem cells to treat patients with arthritis to the Trauma and Orthopaedic Speciality Hospital (Tosh) in Chennai. Since it involved using stem cells to help grow cartilage in his mother’s knee, Kumar reckoned the treatment would last her the rest of her life.
“I agreed to try it even though it was totally new,” says Mehta, now 60. “I’d been in pain for eight years. I couldn’t stand in the kitchen to cook for more than five minutes. If I tried to walk, I was unstable. I fell twice. I survived for years on painkillers.”
Selvan and his team performed a procedure known as autologous collagen-induced chondrogenesis (ACIC). A year ago, they took stem cells from Mehta’s pelvic region and mixed them with a specially developed collagen gel to make a paste. They drilled a hole in her knee and injected the paste. It holds the stem cells against the bone to grow new cartilage. The procedure took 90 minutes and Mehta spent just one night in hospital.
“For three months I had to use a walker to avoid putting weight on that knee. Then I used a walking stick for another month. Now I am 90 per cent cured. I can cook and work in the kitchen and stand for more than half an hour with no pain. I plan to get my other knee done, too, so that I can go back to driving,” says Mehta.