The numbers on chronic pain and shoulder pain are almost shocking. 100 million people in the United States suffer from prolonged or recurrent pain, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Shoulder pain is one of the top causes of ongoing pain in patients. Figures from the American Academy of Pain Medicine show that shoulder pain is the 5th most commonly experienced type of pain in American adults. Furthermore, chronic pain has been shown to be difficult to resolve – with 31% of people in the United States saying that they have been experiencing a pain condition for more than 6 months, per a 2010 report in The Journal of Pain.
Although it is common to suffer from shoulder pain and presents a challenging recovery, people have grown increasingly skeptical of surgery, given its dangers and often unsuccessful outcomes. Doctors and researchers have been increasingly focused on developing better therapies founded on recent advancements in regenerative medicine.
Research on Stem Cells Shows Effectiveness
Stem cell treatments have a truly remarkable impact on shoulder pain and other joint conditions. Consider that within clinical trials, the pain alleviation accomplished through stem cell treatments has often surpassed other signals of healing (e.g., new formation of blood vessels). Marie Csete MD, PhD, noted that this finding “suggests that cell therapies could be affecting pain pathways per se, independent of secondary effects on pain expected from treating an ischemic disease process.”
Research on stem cell therapy has looked promising for some time. Exploring neuropathic pain, a 2007 study published in Anesthesia & Analgesia discovered that it was substantially relieved in rats when stem cells were introduced. Since animal studies increasingly suggested the safety and effectiveness of stem cells as a therapeutic approach, researchers in recent years have increasingly conducted human clinical trials. Studies on people have demonstrated the approach to be safe and effective as well, giving hope to those with shoulder pain and other chronic conditions. For instance, a 2013 study from the journal Transplantation found that stem cell therapy gave patients with knee osteoarthritis two forms of improvement: pain reduction and improvement in the health of their cartilage.
Healing Your Shoulder Pain Non-Surgically
Are you exploring non-surgical treatment options for your shoulder pain? At OrthoGen, we lead the approach to modern joint pain away from invasive surgeries and addictive opioids, into the new frontier of safe and effective stem cell therapies. See our treatments.