(ANSA) - ROME, MARCH 06 - If the knee hurts, the treatment can go through the adipose tissue.
A percentage of fat cells is, in fact, mesenchymal and its characteristic is to act to repair or protect the tissue which, in this case, is cartilage.
The last frontier of conservative treatments exploits this system: the method (called Lipogems) is used at the Irccs Sacro Cuore Don Calabria in Negrar (Verona) which boasts the highest European case history with over 3,000 patients treated.
"With the passage of time the 'bearings' between the bones wear out and thus the movements of the knee become painful. It is a mechanical-degenerative pathology and therefore it can aggravate the pain anything that alters the load of the joints: first of all advancing age, excessive weight and some exasperated mechanical stresses deriving from work or sports activities, such as running or football - explains Claudio Zorzi, director of Orthopedics and Traumatology of the Irccs in Negrar - The Osteoarthritis of the knee is linked to the wear and tear of the cartilage that lines the joint surfaces. As the cartilage wears out, the friction between the underlying bones increases, resulting in joint damage and painful states ".
The infiltration of mesenchymal cells directly into the knee was created to treat the initial-moderate stages of osteoarthritis and, continues Zorzi, "allows the prosthetic implant to be postponed from two to three years with advantages especially in cases of early osteoarthritis".
"The treatment - he adds - lasts about 20 minutes under local anesthesia and takes place in the operating room, through a real liposuction of about 50 grams of fat from the abdomen or thighs. Through a special instrumentation, the fat is micro-fragmented and separated from the blood and other components thus activating the mesenchymal cells ".
"Once this operation has been carried out, the final product is infiltrated directly into the affected joint, during the same session - concludes Zorzi - After a few hours of observation, the patient is discharged. The clinical studies we have conducted on a large number of cases have shown that the patients after two months from the single application have had a clinical benefit such as pain reduction and improvement of the knee condition. This benefit is maintained in a good percentage of the treated subjects for up to three years ".
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