Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Stem Cell Therapy Shows Promise for Pets

I was amazed to see the advances made in the treatment of arthritis in dogs . In this process they take stem cells from the dogs own body fat, do their magic in a lab, and then inject the cells into the dog hip.

“We’re kind of reverting the body back to a younger age or a younger stage when we were more of a regenerative stage,” said Bausman. It is a fairly easy procedure. Hunter was diagnosed with hip dysplasia. The long article I read can be summarized by saying, they CAN treat hip degeneration in dogs successfully, and they do. It is much less expensive than hip replacement surgery, though still pricey for most of us. Hip replacement would have cost $10,000, while stem cell therapy was only $2500 in the case of Hunter the Golden Retriever.
It is a puzzlement that this kind of therapy is available and largely successful for dogs, horses etc, but is not available for humans.

To those who feel dogs and other non-humans are not worthy of such costly treatment, do not post here. Your post will not be added.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am very excited to read about the new technology offered for dogs health care. Many people who are unable to pay for expensive medical procedures now have a viable alternative to return their pets to good health.