How do biologic treatments work?

Biologic treatments stimulate natural tissue healing, working to enhance the body’s own repair process.

At the initial injury, the rupture of the tissue causes fluid to be released from the injured cells surrounding blood vessels. The body responds by sending new blood vessels and cells, which at first specialize in removing the damaged tissue and later stimulate new collagen formation to repair and replace the damaged tissue. Over time, other signals, chemicals and cells induce a maturation process to turn the immature healing tissue into mature strong replacement tissue.

Biologic treatments can augment and accelerate this process. The physician can help your body respond faster to the injury by providing a range of treatments. These can include a massage stimulating the receptors on cells to release healing factors, an injection of growth factors, or the surgical implantation of collagen scaffolds. Surgeons can also use human allograft donor tissue to entirely replace damaged tissue, and can even use animal device tissues called xenografts. During the healing process, additional treatments can speed up the maturation of the healing tissues and induce a stronger repair than might otherwise occur.

A wide range of biologic therapies are available today with more arriving each month