Since I want to be a Vet I wanted to see if there were any new medical advances in the Veterinary Medicine field. What I found out was that there’s a lot of articles on the use of Stem Cell Therapy for animals; mainly for the use of horses, dogs, and cats. I thought this was interesting because I am somewhat familiar with what stem cells are because I did two speeches on it in my Comm150 class last semester. So when reading about how stem cells are becoming a popular procedure I could understand what they were talking about and follow how the process goes. Stem Cell Therapy has become an alternative option for the need of treating injured animal tendons, usually in a area where arthritis occurs.
Before there was Stem Cell Therapy there was really only one option, and that was having a artificial body part surgically implanted to help with the injury. A example of this is a ‘bionic knee’. The surgery is a somewhat cheaper option than the Stem Cell Therapy, but it has a much longer recovery time, so most owners would prefer the Stem Cell therapy because they just want their animals to be healed as quickly as possible. I think this is great that we are discovering better options to heal these injuries because they are becoming more successful and allow people to feel like they aren't forced into just one option. Although this procedure is quite popular among veterinarians, it is still just a experimental treatment and has not been approved or banned by the FDA. The FDA has a say in it because since these stem cells are extracted and cultured before being injected, it makes the cells considered a ‘drug’ and needs to be proven safe and effective before it’s considered a real treatment. I think that this should be an official treatment because it has had a positive effect on animals, and further research with stem cells will only allow us to understand it better which will allow us to find other ways to benefit from it. The process of this experiment is actually really interesting and relatively simple. A company called MediVet created the first affordable in-house Stem Cell Kit, which is what most Veterinarians use across the country today. The kit allows Veterinarians to create the injection in one place, instead of having to send it to another location to be prepared. This makes it more affordable for owners and the shorter time means that it has a greater chance of working on the animal because the sooner it’s injected the quicker it will work. The whole process basically consists of them cutting out a piece of fat from the animal and putting it in a tube to do the extracting process and when that’s done they inject it into the area that needs healing. All animals are different but results are usually seen quickly. I think that this will help create a lot more advances in the field, so I hope it is approved soon so more benefits can come out of it.
This is a video of the in-house procedure if you're interested.
http://www.medivet-america.com