Surgeons are using stem cells to fix broken bones that won’t mend on their own.
Patients who faced a life of disability or even an amputation because of serious fractures have been able to walk once more.

Fifteen patients have so-far been treated in a ground-breaking clinical trial at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry. Assessments of the first 10 patients show that 8 have been successfully healed. They are able to drive and return to work. Previous attempts to rejoin the bones using metal pins and plates had all failed.

Surgeons collect the stem cells in a sample of bone marrow, usually from the patient’s pelvis. They are purified and then multiplied in a sterile laboratory.Three weeks later surgeons expose the broken bone and place the cells around the fracture.Over a period of months the bone becomes as strong as it ever was.

Surgeons hope to treat 40 patients in the clinical trial. Because they are treated with their own cells, there is no chance of them being rejected by their immune systems.

However surgeons are unsure exactly how the stem cell transplants work. The cells may turn into bone themselves to seal the gap, or they secrete chemicals called growth factures that draw in stem cells from elsewhere and kick-start the healing process.

These are experimental treatments for now. But surgeons say the results so far are so promising that stem cells are likely to be widely used on the NHS in a matter of years.

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