In the video, a leading spinal surgery expert in India discusses his education and experience. He also talks about the procedures he specializes in – spinal surgery, joint replacement, revision joint surgery (knee revision, hip revision, shoulder and elbow revision etc.), revision spine surgery, correction of deformities and stem cell therapy.

To hear another surgeon discussing on stem cell transplantation in India, click on the link.

Following is the video narration.

“I trained in India, in Gujarat, most of my primary and post graduate training and then subsequently I went to England, worked in Oxford – the Nuffield orthopaedic center there. And after a few years on England, came back to India, went back to Germany and worked there at ….. Carlsberg which is a centre well known for spinal surgery. Following that I have done various fellowships in America, Switzerland, Australia. Sometimes between two to six months spent in various places in the world. So I think I am adequately trained. I have been practicing now from a long time.

I got a huge number of patients I operate which include spinal surgeries, joint replacements, revision joint surgeries, revision spinal surgeries, correction of deformities etc. apart from the routine trauma.

Publications which I have done, they are on spinal surgery, that we have done two of them when I used work in Oxford. We came out with two papers, one of spinal canal stenosis, the other on the genetic correlation in scoliosis with patient’s relatives including the parents and grandparents. So we take blood samples and try to correlate that.

Preliminary results are very exciting, especially in the area of spinal fusions. I understand now, all across the world, there would be about three to fifteen thousand cases, exact numbers are not known where totipotent cells, mesenchymal stem cells are used. We have now done in the last one month fifteen cases. We have done it for spinal fusions. We have done it for avascular necrosis and also for bone gaps which are ……

The initial results are very encouraging. However before we come to any statistical unbiased report, it would take us sometime, may be a couple of months before we come out with results. It is the largest centre outside United States today, carrying out stem cell therapy.”

Stem Cell Therapy

“We are using mesenchymal stem cells. The stem cells are isolated from the iliac crest so you put in a needle and collect the bone marrow and then centrifuge it. There is a kind of membrane through which you pass the centrifuge and you get a buffy coat which is full of mesenchymal stem cells.

These stem cells are then injected into the site where you want fusion to occur.And when you put it into that site, they get converted to osteoblast which will give rise to new bone and it’s the patient’s own stem cells so there is no question of a reaction.

The amount of blood that we need is slightly over 100 mls which is also a small amount and we take it from the patient’s own iliac crest. That is no incision; it’s a small needle that goes in. It’s actually a much better technique. Other alternatives where we take out the patient’s bone grafts and that would lead to patient having lot of pain at the site of bone graft.

The other alternative was to use bone morphogenic protein, also called as BMP. A bone morphogenic protein is something that works very well. But the only drawback is that it is an extremely expensive proposition.”

Due to the availability of internationally trained surgeons, state-of-the-art hospitals, no waiting queues and an affordable cost of spine surgery in India, it has become the preferred destination of many across the globe for the medical trip.

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