Avascular Necrosis Treatment Without Surgery: Alternatives To Invasive Procedures
Do you think that it is impossible for you to maintain an active life with avascular necrosis?
The pain is unbearable and your mobility is completely affected. You may face challenges in your workplace due to the pain, physical limitation and lowered mobility.
But do you know that there is effective avascular necrosis treatment without surgery?
Regenerative treatments like stem cell therapy have shown exceptional results in treating avascular necrosis.
Let’s learn how these therapies and treatments can help you live a pain-free and active life.
Key Takeaways: Avascular Necrosis Treatment Without Surgery
- How AVN affects your daily life due to the extreme pain and lack of mobility it causes
- What are the causes, symptoms, and stages of AVN? How important it is for you to treat it as early as possible and how untreated AVN can snatch your active life from you.
- What are the benefits of non-surgical treatments of AVN? What are the differences between surgical and non-surgical treatments??
- How stem cell therapy can restore your active life and reduce pain drastically.
- Know whether you are the ideal candidate for stem cell therapy for AVN.
What is Avascular Necrosis?
In simple terms, avascular necrosis (AVN) is a disease in which your bone tissues die due to a lack of blood supply.
When your bone is broken or your dislocated joint hampers the blood flow to a particular area of the bone AVN occurs.
AVN can lead to tiny breaks in your bone and even cause it to collapse.
Though the process of bone collapse may take months and years, you need to treat it in time to avoid such a situation.
Anyone can suffer from AVN but it is common in people within 30 to 50 years of age.
AVN is also known as osteonecrosis.
What parts of your body can be affected by Avascular Necrosis?
Avascular Necrosis can target bone tissues in any joint, but it commonly targets your hips. Other than hips, AVN can affect your:
- Knees
- Upper arms
- Ankles
- Jaw
What are the different types of Avascular Necrosis?
Avascular necrosis or osteonecrosis are of two types. Let’s have a look at them:
Trauma-related avascular necrosis happens after an injury such as bone injury, fracture, or joint dislocation.
Non-trauma-related avascular necrosis is common among people who are consuming alcohol or have been on steroids for a long time.
What are the causes of Avascular Necrosis?
If there is a disruption in blood supply to a part of your bone, AVN can happen. When the blood doesn’t reach that part, it doesn’t get the oxygen and nutrients it needs.
If the area of the bone is small and doesn’t bear your body weight, your body may be able to repair it fast. But if your body cannot repair the bone, it may result in bone erosion, fracture, and bone collapse.
The causes of AVN can be:
- Injury
- Blood vessel damage
- Fracture
- Accessive alcohol abuse
- Smoking
- Certain chronic medical conditions
- Long-time use of steroids
Some of the risk factors of AVN are:
- Radiation treatment
- Chemotherapy
- Pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas)
- Decompression disease (a life-threatening disease which occurs when dissolved gases form bubbles in the bloodstream)
- Autoimmune diseases
Now that you know the causes, let’s move on and learn about the symptoms.
What are the symptoms of Avascular Necrosis?
You may not have any symptoms during the initial stage. But slowly, you will experience them. The symptoms of AVN are
- Intermittent pain
- Stiff joints
- AVN in hips or knees can lead to limping
- Sudden increase in pain due to bone collapse
- Motion limited by pain
- Difficulty in climbing stairs, walking, and standing for a long time
- Arthritis
The symptoms will vary depending on the stages of avascular necrosis.
What are the stages of Avascular Necrosis?
There are five stages of AVN. Let’s learn about them:
The disease starts without any symptoms because they do not show during the initial stage. X-rays don’t show any changes, especially if you have minor bone thinning. An MRI that can detect swelling will help detect AVN.
In this stage, X-rays will be able to show hardening in the middle top part of the joint, thinning of bones, and small fluid-filled pockets under the bone surface.
The usual smooth surface of the joint gets pressed down a little bit which changes its usual round shape. Because of that the space in the joint becomes smaller. If you do an X-ray at this stage, it will show a curved line, called a crescent sign.
If you have reached this stage, there’s a big collapse of the bone just under the cartilage and damage to the bone’s internal structure. You may suffer from secondary arthritis due to this.
If you have reached this stage, both surfaces of your joint have been damaged, making it completely dysfunctional.
Understanding these stages and their severity will help you get the right treatment at the right time to get back your functionality.
How is Avascular Necrosis diagnosed?
Your doctor may use different tests to diagnose whether you have AVN.
- They will check your medical history
- They will do a physical examination
- They can take the help of imaging tests like Xrays, MRIs, and CT scans
The doctors may use X-rays first to check if there are any other causes of joint pain. They will determine it with MRIs and CT scans, as they provide a clearer image of your bone and the extent of the damage.
Current surgical interventions and their limitations
Surgical interventions are used when you are at the last stage of AVN and there is bone collapse. However, surgical treatments are invasive and need more recovery time.
At the same time, non-surgical interventions like regenerative medicines can regenerate the dead cells and heal you from the pain and loss of mobility. These procedures help you recover much faster and in a non-invasive way.
Surgical treatment options
Conventionally, when you are at the last stage of AVN, the doctor can advise surgery to remove the dead bone cells. In that case, your orthopaedic surgeon might recommend either of the following surgical interventions:
A core decompression surgery is usually advised to conserve the function and the structure of the affected bone or joint. This surgery also helps in relieving pain associated with osteonecrosis.
During core decompression surgery your doctor repairs the affected site by coring or removing the dead cells and then filling the cored area with a bone graft.
If the necrosis has affected the joint adversely and there is no scope of repair then your doctor may advise total joint replacement for you.
During bone reshaping surgery your doctor removes a part of the bone either from above or below the affected weight-bearing joint to shift the body weight from them. This surgery is typically done to delay joint replacement.
Avascular Necrosis Treatment Without Surgery Options
Conventionally, non-surgical treatments were used along with surgery to manage the blood supply at the affected joint. These non-surgical interventions include:
- Regenerative medicines
- Medications to manage pain
- Medication to control osteoporosis
- Usage of crutches to reduce pressure on weight-bearing joints like hip joints and knee joints.
- Certain exercises to improve blood supply at the affected bone.
- Lifestyle modification
However, today non-surgical treatments like regenerative treatments have shown some exceptional results in treating AVN. Before we move on to learn about the benefits of regenerative treatments like stem cell therapy, let’s have a look at the differences between surgical and non-surgical treatments for AVN.
Surgical Vs. Non-surgical
Here are some differences between surgical and nonsurgical treatments for avascular necrosis:
| Parameter | Surgical | Non-surgical |
| Method | Surgeries are invasive and they need incision and tissue manipulation to reduce pain and increase mobility. | Non-surgical treatments are non-invasive or minimally invasive. |
| Recovery Period | Surgical treatments need a longer recovery period and at times require rehabilitation. | Most non-surgical treatments have a shorter recovery period. |
| Focus | Surgical treatment tries to address the structural issues directly. They try to relieve pain and restore function. They are mostly used when non-surgical treatments do not work. | Nonsurgical treatments aim to manage symptoms, delay progression, and preserve joint function. The regenerative treatments also focus on regaining function and healing pain. |
With regenerative medicine and stem cell treatment, things have changed completely, and now stem cell therapy can help you get relief from pain and regain your mobility.
How does regenerative medicine treat AVN?
Regenerative medicines focus on using your body’s natural healing capacity to boost the regeneration of tissues and cells and repair your body parts.
Experts have used stem cell therapy as a regenerative medicine to treat AVN. This therapy is used to regenerate damaged tissues in AVN patients.
Some of the benefits of using regenerative medicines for AVN are:
- Regenerative medicine can promote healthy cells and tissues to repair the damaged bones of AVN patients. This approach of treatment provides sustainable relief instead of temporary management of symptoms.
- Regenerative medicine like stem cell therapy is minimally invasive and that minimizes the potential side effects.
- Regenerative medicines have a shorter recovery period.
Is Avascular Necrosis treatment with stem cell therapy effective?
Stem cell therapy has shown some promising results in treating avascular necrosis. Mesenchymal stem cells can help significantly in giving you relief from pain, boost your body function, and halt the progress of AVN by regenerating your bone.
Stem cells have the unique potential to regenerate other cells and tissues. The stem cell specialists use the regenerative power of these cells to give you permanent relief from pain and repair damaged bone.
Daniel Wiznia, who is a Yale Surgeon, compares bones with dinner plates. He says, “Over time, the glaze of a plate will form cracks. And eventually, it will break. Bones work in the same way. Our blood provides nourishment to our bones. Our blood provides nourishment to our bones so that the cells within them can repair those cracks. But if the bones don’t have that blood supply, they can’t regenerate and fix the fracture.”
Stem cells come to rescue your bone in such situations. They can regenerate new blood vessels, muscles, and bones. Wiznia further added, “Because we are able to replace injured bone with fresh bone, you may not need a more invasive procedure, such as joint replacement.”
Stem cells not only regenerate damaged tissues, blood vessels, and bones but they also improve the blood flow to the bone, giving you a more sustainable relief from AVN and its symptoms.
There is no doubt that stem cell therapy is the way forward to treat avascular necrosis but who is the ideal candidate for a cell-based advanced treatment for it?
Let’s find out!