Should We Assume an Orthopedic Surgeon is and Expert in Regenerative Medicine?
This is a question or a statement we get from patients from time to time. It always makes me chuckle. Currently there is not a medical school that teaches regenerative medicine techniques for injections or harvesting for other uses then treating cancer anywhere.
All the regenerative medicine education must be taken post-graduation at different seminars and trainings. Not to mention new Regenerative Medicine technology and advances occur every year and something new comes out or some new method is discovered. So, as a Medical Provider you must be doing training multiple times a year and doing hundreds of cases a year to become an expert.
Also, there is a technique to injecting that must be mastered to ensure proper placement. While surgeons and sports medicine doctors have training in these areas they may not do a lot of injections on a daily basis. By name an orthopedic surgeon is a surgeon. Surgeons do surgery as their main expertise. In a clinic like Core Medical Center, our main doctor does close to 20 injections a day in the spine, knees, hips, shoulders any joint you can name. That is a far more than an orthopedic surgeon is providing.
How do we know? Because if a surgeon is using proper image guiding equipment and techniques they would not have enough time to do this many of these types of injections and still perform surgeries. It just would not be possible to fit it into a working day. The other thing that makes me chuckle about this question is that typically the patient has come to us because their orthopedist has recommended they get a surgery such as a joint replacement. Then they go back to that same orthopedist and say I want to do Regenerative Medicine and I found a place that does it. The orthopedist will typically say, “Oh, well we do Regenerative Medicine here too. “
Stop to think about this approach for a moment. This Doctor recommended a replacement, didn’t even mention Regenerative Medicine until you told him you where going to go somewhere else and if the Regenerative Medicine procedure he performs fails he or she will probably end up doing the joint replacement surgery on you. That’s like letting the fox guard the hen house. Do not blindly look at titles find out what they really know and how much regenerative medicine they really do, ask about recent training and different methods or types of Regenerative Medicine harvesting. You might be surprised how little they know about it and that will make a huge difference in the long-term success of your treatment outcomes!
