Using stem cells to regenerate cartilage

A team of Malaysian doctors achieved success and gained international attention by being innovative, passionate and a little bit crazy.

ON a quiet weekend in 2011, hand surgeon Dr Ranjit Singh Gill flexed his fingers as he watched a limousine and police outriders pull up to the front entrance of the Kuala Lumpur Sports Medicine Centre (KLSMC).

A middle-aged man emerged from the car flanked by bodyguards. Dr Ranjit Singh greeted his patient. The whole group crowded into an elevator which took them to the fifth floor where a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine awaited. The bodyguards stood sentry outside.

My arm has been bothering me, the patient told Dr Ranjit Singh. After he gently flexed his patients arm and studied the MRI scans, he suggested that the patient undergo keyhole surgery and five rounds of stem cell injections.

These stem cells would repair the injured area and regenerate the cartilage tissue. The treatment was so simple, it was almost too good to be true.

In fact, global experts in the field of orthopaedics are divided over the use of adult stem cells to repair cartilage.

Cartilage basically does not heal, Dr Hubert Kim, director of the Cartilage Repair and Regeneration Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, is quoted as saying in an interview on the centres website.

Dr Ranjit Singhs treatment, developed in Malaysia, flew in the face of medical textbooks. It took guts to suggest the road less travelled.

Doctors should always take the route thats safest for the patient. But sometimes, the textbook solution is not necessarily the safest way of doing things, Dr Ranjit Singh told me in a series of interviews, as he recounted treating this unique patient, who shall go unnamed because of doctor-patient confidentiality.

You need to continuously challenge yourself with difficult decisions. Its a big responsibility.

Originally posted here:
Using stem cells to regenerate cartilage