First Contact Health medical director and consultant orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ranjan Vhadra and Dr Daniel Filesch, who is over from Germany, are performing the treatment.
Stem cells are cells that can develop into various types of tissue. Stem cell therapy uses the body’s own stem cells, which are injected into the joint to regenerate damaged tissue. This treatment stimulates the body’s own healing processes and helps to slow down the breakdown of cartilage in osteoarthritis and can relieve joint pain.
Dr Filesch gave a talk about stem cell treatment at an event at Les Cotils on Monday night.
‘We call them pluripotent cells,’ he said.
‘These are cells that can become everything and they’re very strong signalling cells. The main problem, what we have in orthopaedics, is that we try to decrease or we try to stop inflammation, especially arthrosis.
‘Stem cells change the signalling pathway, and they introduce a healing. It doesn’t mean that we can heal arthrosis, I would never say that, but we can stop the inflammation for quite some time.’
Dr Filesch has treated more than 10 Guernsey patients in Germany having built a professional relationship with Dr Vhadra – who has now referred patients to Dr Filesch – at an international meeting in Copenhagen.
‘He’s an orthopaedic surgeon like me who really specialises in regenerative medicine and he does stuff that just isn’t available, certainly not in the Channel Islands, and most of the stuff isn’t available in the UK,’ said Dr Vhadra.
‘He’s a real expert at it so I went and visited a few times and I’ve been sending patients from Guernsey and been getting fabulous results.’
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