Two doctors used dehydrated amniotic tissue to heal an otherwise nonhealing surgical knee wound. The doctors are Neil Riodan, Ph.D. and orthopedic surgeon Wade McKenna, D.O. According to PR Rocket;, which reported the story, the tissue used was AlphaPatch, developed by Amniotic Therapies of Dallas, Texas.
Amniotic Tissue Heals Knee Wound
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The patient was a 78-year-old man, who had a non-healing surgical wound following a total knee replacement performed six weeks before. He had not responded after six weeks of conservative wound care and the wound showed no signs of healing.
In the operating room McKenna irrigated the wound and then placed two AlphaPatch dry amniotic membranes over the wound. After two weeks a scab had formed. At four weeks the wound had completely scabbed over and at ten weeks the wound was completely healed.
The July issue of the Journal of Translational Medicine published the report which is titled, “Case Report Of Non-Healing Surgical Wound Treated with Dehydrated Amniotic Membrane.” PR Rocket reports that this is the third peer-reviewed journal article on regenerative medicine published by the Riordan-McKenna Institute.
The authors emphasized that a common misconception is that dehydrated amniotic membrane products contain live stem cells. They said it does not contain any stem cells but it does contain a number of growth factors that promote healing and stimulate the body’s own stem cells to become activated. They suggest that the cells may behave in a manner similar to stem cells in a younger person.
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This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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