Peter Chapman-Smith
NZ Stem Cell Treatment Centre, New Zealand
Title: Adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells for low back pain- the New Zealand experience
Biography
Biography: Peter Chapman-Smith
Abstract
AMSCs have increasingly been used to successfully and safely to treat osteoarthritis in peripheral joints in the last decade worldwide. Veterinary similar experience has been documented for decades in animals. Adipose tissue has proven useful as a source of adult mesenchymal stem cells, readily available with a mini-liposuction procedure under local anaesthesia alone, and readily repeatable in future is required. Low back pain (LBP) affects 80% of adults at some time, a very high morbidity. The public and private cost in pain and loss of quality of life (QOL) and time off work and leisure is extensive, widely accepted for this all too common disorder. With conservative treatment most cases of LBP will resolve in 6 weeks. Surgical management can be indicated for unremitting nerve compression, only required for a small percentage of cases. AMSCs administered as stromal vascular fraction, SVF, is a new option that can be effective for chronic low back pain of multiple causation including disc disease and facet arthropathy. A single SVF treatment alone may be sufficient, deployed intravenously and concurrently into the lumbar epidural space by translaminar or transforaminal approach, or via the sacrococcygeal ligament as a simple direct caudal injection. Methods of managing LBP with SVF therapy will be presented, and clinical case series data that is encouraging from SVF use in New Zealand. The safety of this simple noninvasive technique is revolutionary.