Stem cell therapy for femoral head necrosis?

  Femoral head necrosis is also a common orthopaedic disorder that seriously endangers the health of young and middle-aged patients in China. The number of new cases of osteonecrosis of the femoral head in China is between 150,000 and 200,000 each year, and the cumulative number of cases requiring treatment is between 5 million and 7.5 million. Since a second surgery is necessary about 15 years after artificial joint replacement for young and middle-aged patients, the ideal treatment for femoral head necrosis is to preserve the patient’s own femoral head.  Severe fractures caused by high-energy trauma to the extremities are often characterized by thermal injury, soft tissue injury, and secondary infection, resulting in bone loss at the fracture end and bone discontinuity due to low bone vitality. The number of bone defects requiring treatment due to trauma is maintained at nearly 150,000 cases per year in the United States, and a large number of cases exist in China. According to statistics, osteonecrosis may occur in 5-10% of fracture patients.  Bone discontinuity and femoral head necrosis have more limitations in terms of treatment outcome and degree of repair and remain a major clinical challenge in orthopedics. These patients are extremely distressed, have a low quality of life, increase government and family health care costs, and reduce social productivity. The use of bone tissue engineering can improve the treatment of these patients. Bone marrow stem cells may be one of the effective treatments for this disease, and our hospital has established a stem cell treatment center with a full set of cell culture, testing and implantation equipment, which has been applied in the clinic and has achieved certain efficacy.  Indications for femoral head necrosis stem cell transplantation: Patients with stage I-II and some stage III femoral head necrosis. Early cases should be early cases with intact femoral head and should be stage I and II cases. stage III cases should be carefully selected because of the collapse of the femoral head.  Indications for osteoclastic stem cell transplantation: (1) Internal fixation has not completely failed and the fracture is well aligned after internal fixation.  (2) Not due to infectious factors.  (3) The fracture gap is not greater than 5 mm.  (4) No history of chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, or malnutrition.  (5) Meet the criteria for delayed fracture healing, or bone discontinuity.