Avascular Necrosis
Avascular Necrosis (AVN), also known as Osteonecrosis, is a condition characterized by the death of bone tissue due to a lack of blood supply. This can occur when healthy stem cells in the bone die, become diseased, or are insufficient to maintain normal bone health. Understanding and managing AVN early is crucial to prevent its progression and mitigate pain effectively.
Subscribe to the BlogWhat Does Treating Hip AVN without Surgery Have to Do with the History of Orthobiologics?
Many of the advanced interventional orthobiologics procedures currently used in peripheral joints and spine were developed by our Colorado HQ. That led to the creation of the Interventional Orthobiologics Foundation (IOF) which has continued to teach and evolve these breakthrough procedures. However, one procedure that we didn’t develop is the precise x-ray-guided injection of bone…read more
Healing Spontaneous Osteonecrosis of the Knee without Surgery
SPONK is one of those medical terms that just sounds strange, but it’s a really big nasty problem. This is the story of a patient who developed spontaneous osteonecrosis of the knee likely due to excessive knee steroid shots, who was told she needed a knee replacement, but who instead used injections of her own…read more
Can You Treat SPONK without Surgery?
What is SPONK? What are the implications for your knee? Can it be treated without surgery? Let’s dig in. What is SPONK? SPONK stands for SPontaneous OsteoNecrosis of the Knee (1). Osteonecrosis is a bone disease where the bone dies off and then begins to lose its structural integrity. This loss of strong bone can…read more Osteonecrosis Treatment Without Surgery? This Is a Tough One…
Yesterday, I treated a patient at our licensed Grand Cayman advanced practice site who had at least 11 sites of a dreaded disease known as osteonecrosis. Her disease is so severe that she fractured her knee femur bone just by using a kickboard for a single lap in the pool. The orthopedic surgeons back home…read more AVN Hip Stem Cell Treatment: How It’s Done…
What is AVN? AVN stands for avascular necrosis. This is also known as osteonecrosis. This is a disease where the stem and progenitor cells (repair crew) in bone can’t function and the bone begins to die off. The bone can collapse, which in the hip, can cause a square peg in a round hole. There…read more Hip AVN Surgery Alternative: Another Hip AVN Patient Treated with Stem Cells
Can an injection of stem cells act as a hip AVN surgery alternative? PL is a young man in his twenties who was diagnosed with hip AVN. Like many diagnosed with this disease, he had no risk factors and it’s likely that we’ll never know how he got the disease. He saw several orthopedic surgeons…read more
