Understanding Femoral Head Necrosis Autologous Bone Marrow Stem Cell Transplantation

  Recently, the Department of Orthopaedics of Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital successfully applied the minimally invasive autologous bone marrow stem cell transplantation technique to treat femoral head necrosis, and only a 1.5 cm wound was made in the patient’s thigh to achieve the treatment. Both patients showed significant improvement in their symptoms after surgery and were able to walk on the ground within 2-3 days after surgery.  Femoral head necrosis is a disease caused by various pathologies that lead to the disruption of blood supply to the femoral head, resulting in necrosis of bone cells and bone tissue in the femoral head, with hip pain and claudication as the main symptoms. There are about 5-7.5 million patients with femoral head necrosis in China. Due to the variable etiology and complex pathological changes of femoral head necrosis, its treatment has always been a medical problem. Many patients suffer from the progression of femoral head necrosis, and their symptoms worsen until they lose their ability to move and work. Many advanced Western countries have classified this disease as an unsolved intractable disease and invested heavily in research, but there are still many problems to be solved, and some people call osteonecrosis of the femoral head the disease of the century.  Although some people in China have tried to use the so-called “vascular implantation” method to treat osteonecrosis of the femoral head, they have not achieved results. The latest research proves that femoral head necrosis also leads to impaired function of stem cells in the femoral head and low growth and differentiation ability, so that the bone cannot be repaired and regenerated after osteonecrosis. Stem cells are self-replicating cells that can differentiate into a variety of functional cells and generate various tissues and organs as needed, which is called “universal cells” in medical science. Clinical practice has proved that many diseases that are difficult to be treated by traditional medicine, such as paralysis, blindness, Parkinson’s disease, myocardial infarction and diabetes, can be recovered with the help of stem cell therapy. Now the orthopedic department of Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital uses minimally invasive technology to apply the internationally advanced stem cell technology to the treatment of osteonecrosis of the femoral head, bringing hope to many unfortunate patients with osteonecrosis of the femoral head.  Stem cell transplantation is a minimally invasive procedure in which the doctor only needs to make a 1.5 cm long incision on the outside of the patient’s thigh and use special instruments to remove the necrotic bone inside the femoral head. Stem cells taken from the patient’s own bone marrow are then implanted into the osteonecrotic area. When the stem cells are transplanted into the patient’s femoral head, they are like seeds planted into the bone, and under the regulation of the microenvironment in the bone, they differentiate into osteoblasts and take up the job of repairing osteonecrosis and rebuilding the structure of the femoral head.