What is it?
Stem Cells are powerful healing cells in your body that can become other types of cells. There are many adult stem cells in fat tissue, however they are asleep. Stem cell therapy allows your veterinarian to isolate stem cells from an animal’s own fat tissue, wake them up, and re-introduce the healing cells into the areas of need.
Is it Safe?
Yes!! This procedure is very safe. On a typical dog, this is easier than a spay, and the fat is collected in about 15 minutes by your veterinarian. Processing the sample is done carefully by a highly trained laboratory technician. In the thousands of animals treated, we have not observed any negative side effects from Stem Cell therapy.
What conditions do you treat?
Our typical patient has osteoarthritis (hip dysplasia, degenerative joint disease, calcifications, common degeneration and inflammation). If your animal is suffering from something different such as Atopic Dermatitis, Inflammatory Bowel Disease etc. Dr. McMillen will consult a team in order to consider stem cell as a treatment option compassionately.
What is so great about Stem Cell Therapy?
Stem cells treat the source of the problem by offering the ability to become new tissue to replace damaged tissue. Other treatments, such as NSAIDs, merely attempt to reduce symptoms. The treatment is very low risk, because it uses the animal’s own stem cells. It offers an all-natural holistic alternative to drugs and steroids. In a recent randomized sampling of 155 canine’s sufferings from osteoarthritis > 95% showed improvements as reported by the treating Veterinarians.
What is the recovery period, and how long does it take to see results?
We recommend that the patient be kept quiet for the first 10 days. Then, while they may feel a lot better, you will need to be careful so your pet doesn’t injure themselves until they build up some of their muscles. Swimming and walking in water is great therapy. We typically see improvement starting after 3 weeks, and then continuing up to around 2 months.
How long does a treatment last? What happens if my pet starts having trouble again?
We typically see about 1-4 years of relief after the initial treatment. Most pet owners chose to bank cells, so re-treatment is easy. Ardent Animal Health has a banking facility in Kentucky. If symptoms return, Dr. McMillen merely requests a dose of cells from the bank, and re-introduces the cells. No surgery is necessary.
