Dr. Harold Cordner of Florida Pain Management Associates is a man on a mission.
Board certified in both anesthesiology and pain management, Cordner is a pioneer practitioner and strong advocate in the evolving field of “regenerative medicine.”
In simpler terms, he’s a stem cell fan.
Now, before tempers start to flair and torches and pitchforks come out at the mere mention of stem cells, Cordner quickly points out, “They’re not stem cells that come from embryos or research or anything like that. We all have stem cells in our body.”
The VB physician says he has had great success using people’s own stem cells – extracted, cultured and reinjected – to regenerate tissue and relieve pain, especially in the treatment of worn-out, painful knees.
Longtime Vero Beach orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Griffin is another local proponent of stem cell therapy for joint rehabilitation.
Griffin is so impressed with the potential of stem cell therapy that he’s had his own knee treated with it and adds that the knee has, “done quite well.” In fact, Griffin has teamed with another well-known Vero physician, Dr. Richard Steinfeld, to form Florida Stem Cell, LLC.
Like any surgeon, Griffin is well aware of the complications that can arise from knee, hip or shoulder replacement surgeries and points out that in stem cell treatment, “the complication rate is virtually nil.”
Not everyone, however, is quite as enthusiastic as the two Vero doctors about the use of stem cell therapy.
Dr. Joseph Meyer, Jr. at the Columbia Interventional Pain Center in St. Louis, MO is fairly blunt in his assessment: “I tell everybody that this is experimental with a capital E. We don’t know if it works. I do believe that it’s safe, but it might not do anything for you.”
There has been legal controversy about the procedure, as well. The FDA attempted to regulate stem cell therapy as if it were a new drug but the courts ruled that re-injecting a person’s stem cells into their own body is not a drug or a medicine and is therefore beyond FDA control.
Despite the doubts of some, Cordner’s goal since 2001 has been to refine the procedures of harvesting and processing a patient’s own stem cells. He then re-injects those cells back into the patient so they will “differentiate” or grow into new muscle, bone or cartilage to replace damaged or worn-out tissue in the body.
For years, most adult stem cells were harvested from bone marrow but now Cordner and his colleagues say they’ve found a better and more plentiful source that physicians and clinicians call “adipose tissue.” The rest of us call it ‘fat.”
Cordner is convinced regenerative stem cell medicine will soon have a powerful impact on multiple medical disciplines ranging from orthopedics to coronary health to treating lung diseases, as well as pain management.
“In [spinal] pain management,” the professorial Cordner states, “[our hope is] to be able to regenerate a disc because most of the patients we see have disc problems. Disc herniation, disc degeneration – that’s the vast majority of what people have. If we could get those discs to regenerate, that would be the holy grail for our practice.”
He adds that certain types of stem cells, “can differentiate into the tissues needed,” to regenerate discs.
“In most of the instances here,” the pain management doctor explains, “We use [stem cells] for orthopedic applications such as knees or hips. They work very well for that.”
Cordner then makes an even bolder statement: “Every single knee we’ve done [has resulted in] 100 percent pain relief. I mean, every one of them has done extremely well. No pain at all afterwards.”
Again, Cordner’s claims are not universally echoed. Speaking at the American Academy of Pain Management’s annual clinical meeting last year, Dr. Harry Adelson pointed to an informal survey of patients at his own practice who had received stem cell therapy for arthritis in the knee. Adelson says only 52 percent showed significant improvement over a 12 to 18 month period. Good, maybe, but not the 100 percent rate Cordner claims.
Cordner, however, remains confident and predicts stem cell therapy will become more and more commonplace in multiple medical disciplines. “They also do stem cells for the heart now for heart failure, [cells] that will grow into muscle,” he says.
In lung treatments, Cordner continues, “We have patients who are crippled. They’re end-stage COPD. They can’t breathe. After they inhale half the stem cells and we inject them with an IV, they’re off their meds, they’re off inhalers, they’re off oxygen. I mean, it’s amazing what you can do. The future of regenerative medicine is huge. It is really starting to take off.”
One of the biggest problems with stem cell therapy, Cordner admits, has been that until recently harvesting and processing sufficient numbers of stem cells to make a difference has been problematic. But he says that limitation is being overcome.
It used to be doctors could culture and re-inject one million, or at most five million, stem cells, but there now is a process that can create “at least a hundred million stem cells” for therapy. With many more stem cells at work in an injured area, the expectation is that recovery will be more rapid and complete.
For the present, stem cell therapy treatments are an out-of-pocket expense for most patients since Medicare and most insurance providers decline to pick up the tab – a tab Cordner says averages around $7,500.
Still, if FDA-approved pharmaceutical approaches to dealing with pain – including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids, opioids and muscle relaxants – aren’t working, and the patient wants to avoid joint replacement, $7,500 may be something many are willing to pay in pursuit of pain relief.
Dr. Harold Cordner is at Florida Pain Management Associates at 13825 U.S. Highway One in Sebastian. The phone number is 772-388-9742. Dr. David Griffin and Dr. Richard Steinfeld are at 1285 36th Street in Vero. The phone number is 772-778-2009.
