Stem Surgery Miracle - Australian Breakthrough to End Painful Bone Grafts

By Jane Bunce
April 06, 2006
Daily Telegraph

DOCTORS have implanted adult stem cells into a patient's broken leg in an Australian world-first experimental procedure they hope will replace painful bone grafts.

Jamie Stevens, 21, shattered his leg in a motorbike accident in June. Nine months of discomfort and inactivity later the break had still not healed.

Last Friday, Royal Melbourne Hospital orthopedics director Richard de Steiger inserted about 30 million of Mr. Stevens' own stem cells into the 5cm cavity in his left thigh bone, coated on two pieces of "scaffolding" made of a bone-like material.

The stem cells were harvested from his bone marrow during a biopsy about seven weeks earlier and cultured in a laboratory to expand and differentiate them into bone-producing cells.

Doctors will have to wait six weeks before they know if the cells are likely to grow into new bone.

Dr. de Steiger said he hoped the cavity in Mr. Stevens' bone would have completely filled after 16 weeks.

"Like any medical research it's exciting, but it's tempered by the fact you have to wait and see," Dr. de Steiger said.

Mr. Stevens, from Ivanhoe, is the first of 10 patients who will undergo the procedure over the next 12 months at the hospital in a clinical trial.

He will be discharged from Royal Melbourne Hospital today on crutches and with his leg swollen, but feeling confident the procedure will work.

"It's still quite sore but it's better than it was," he said yesterday.

"I'm pretty happy to be the first one in the world."

Dr. de Steiger said long bone fractures failed to heal in about 10 per cent of cases, which usually led to a bone graft.

"It has been the standard way for many years, but it does involve quite a large incision in the pelvis bone [and] it involves taking out a large amount of bone in Jamie's case," he said.

"In this situation there are risks, obviously. It's a separate incision, patients have reported ongoing pain from that incision and you have a separate risk of infection at that site."

He said the treatment could reduce hospital stays and recovery time while reducing patient discomfort.

Patients with smaller breaks may not require the scaffolding and in some cases may be able to have the stem cells injected directly into the damaged bone.

Using the patients' own stem cells eliminates the risk of rejection that can occur with cells from another donor.

The Australian company behind the stem cell development technique, Mesoblast Ltd, was involved in another world-first operation in February in which cells were injected into the hearts of two Australian men with badly blocked arteries, in the hope they grow into new heart muscles and arteries.

Preliminary results of that trial are expected in May.

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