Does your Pet suffer from Degenerative Disease or Osteoarthritis?

OR

Have problems running, jumping or climbing up stairs?

If you answered yes to any of these problems, then Stem Cell Therapy may help.

The joints, ligaments, tendons and bones of our animals degenerate with
age, just like in humans.

Stem Cell Article from the Observer Reporter

New stem cell procedure is doggone good for pets
By Tara Kinsell, Staff writer tkinsell@observer-reporter.com
 WAYNESBURG - As many owners of larger, purebred dogs know, these breeds are prone to arthritic conditions as they age. Thanks to a relatively new stem cell technology, called Adipose, dogs, cats and horses with degenerative joint diseases can now be treated as an inpatient at their own veterinary office.
One such dog, a 6-year old Great Pyrenees named Takita, recently underwent the procedure at the first veterinarian clinic to offer Adipose in Greene County.
Using Takita's own stem cells, Dr. Anita McMillan of the Braden Run Animal Hospital removed adipose tissue (fat) from Takita's side, removed the stem cells from it using an Adipose Stem Cell Procedure Kit developed by Medivet Veterinary Supplies and then injected the stem cells back into Takita to rejuvenate her problem areas.
Takita went to McMillan with a severe degradation of her patella tendon, arthritis in her legs and no space in her joints that limited her ability to get around without pain.
"She has been on pain meds for a while now," said Takita's owner, Teresa Rankin of Crucible. "After this procedure they are usually walking better within 72 hours and have more mobility in the joint and it just keeps getting better."
Rankin said that was why she made the decision to have the stem cell procedure done on Takita.
"We took her to be seen about a year ago because she was limping really badly. They thought she had pulled a muscle and put her on pain medications, but they said that they could mess up her kidneys," Rankin said. "We came here, to Braden Run, for a second opinion."
The timing turned out to be perfect, as McMillan had just begun to offer the stem cell treatment using the Adipose Stem Cell Procedure Kits.
Older stem cell treatments required doctors to harvest the fat containing the stem cells from the animal, send it away and then wait for the retrieved stem cells to be returned to them to complete the procedure. Thanks to Adipose, McMillan could harvest Takita's own cells on site and do the procedure all in the same day.
"It is less painful than being spayed or neutered," according to McMillan.
Adipose Stem Cell technology is less invasive than bone marrow procedures as it uses an animal's own adipose tissue (fat) to harvest the stem cells. It can achieve this at volumes of up to 1,000 times greater than harvesting from bone marrow, increasing the option to store harvested cells for later usage by the animal patient.
As stem cells are fragile by nature, the old technique of mailing the harvested fat to a lab for them to be extracted often resulted in a loss of as much as 40 percent of the usable stem cells.
On Dec. 17, Takita become the second patient to undergo the Adipose treatment. The first was Bea, a 32-year old horse.
"She could barely walk and the owner wanted the quality of her life to be improved," McMillan said. "When I went there two weeks later to take her stitches out, I couldn't catch her. It was amazing. She loped away, laid down and rolled. The owner was overjoyed."
McMillan said she wouldn't term the horse as perfect, but it was a vast improvement on her previous state.
"Before the surgery, she was bearing all of her weight on her hind legs. Her knees in her front legs were shot," she said. "It is a miracle. I hope to do my own horse in the spring."
As for Takita, it will be another couple of weeks before X-rays are taken to show the results of the procedure.
However, McMillan said, "Even after two days she is really doing well and wanting to play. She is already much better than she was before she had Adipose but that is mostly from the platelet-rich plasma at this point."
Most animal owners can expect post-operative pain for a couple of days, but McMillan said that has not been the experience for either of her patients.
Unlike many medical procedures and products that undergo animal testing before being used on humans, Gregg Stewart, president of Medivet Veterinary Supplies, Pittsburgh LLC, said that the Adipose system was done in reverse.
"Humans were the guinea pigs for the animals in this case," he said.
Adipose costs three to four times less than the older stem cell retrieval technologies since the patient only has to undergo the anesthesia once.
For now, it is simply wait and see what happens with Takita, but so far so good.
"It is why I got into veterinary medicine. Being able to do this type of procedure completely in-house to restore these animals to their former selves. This is like a dream come true," McMillan said.

*AAHA-American Animal Hospital Association