Hadassah News - January 2010
January 2010
Video: Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef Interviewed by Nancy Falchuk
Bone Repair Breakthrough from Hadassah - A World First
Jerusalem's
Hadassah Medical Center has, for the first time in the world, repaired
fractured bones by harnessing adult stem cells and platelets from their
patients' blood and bone marrow and injecting them at the fracture
site. The bones, report Prof. Meir Liebergall, Head of Hadassah's
Orthopedic Department (pictured left), and Prof. Eithan Galun, head of
Hadassah's Goldyne Savad Institute of Gene Therapy, healed in a
quarter to a third of the time it usually takes with traditional
methods. In addition, the Hadassah team repaired some breaks that would
not heal at all without this bone marrow transplant.
While the
Hadassah team began the preliminary work on this technique a decade
ago, the physicians have now performed the procedure successfully on
seven patients with broken tibias (the inner bone of the lower leg),
aged 18 to 60. Instead of taking the traditional six to nine months to
heal, the fractures treated with adult stem cells and platelets healed
in two months. Prof. Liebergall notes that although in principle any
type of fracture that typically takes six to nine months to heal or
doesn't heal at all can be treated with the technique, the therapy is
most suited for high-impact fractures, resulting from sports injuries
or accidents. The technique, performed either under regional or
general anesthesia, involves removing 50 milliliters of mesenchymal
bone marrow cells and 100 milliliters of blood from the hip area. The
adult stem cells can differentiate into bone cells and, once processed
in the lab, be injected into the fracture site to repair the bone.
David
Bonnen, who slipped on some stairs while out for a walk with his dog,
underwent the new treatment three months ago to repair the complicated
fracture on his leg. "The transplantation was not traumatic at all," he
reports. "I was very afraid before the treatment, but it went very
quickly with no side effects. I went home the day after; within a few
days, I had much less pain and felt more independent. I was able to
walk with only one crutch and very soon I didn't need crutches at all.
Three months later, I walk freely." He adds, "I have met people with
similar injuries who did not recuperate after a year or even two years."
