Veterinarian Leslie Dahl knows the obstacles that aging pets can face, and as a pet owner, she has watched her own dog struggle with arthritic hips.
Doodle, a German shepherd, was the first animal in Illinois to undergo a same-day, in-clinic stem cell procedure.
Dr. Mitch Robbins oversaw the procedure, where he removed fat tissue from Doodle’s abdominal area and used the Buffalo Grove Veterinary Specialty Center’s newest technology to inject the dog’s hip joints with her own stem cells.
“The reason that it works is that those cells that we’re removing and processing and stimulating are cells that are normally associated with the healing process and the inflammatory process in the body,” Robbins said. “So they go into the joint, they reduce some of the inflammation in the joint, they improve and reduce pain, they improve range of motion, they improve use of the joint.”
Buffalo Grove has performed approximately 40 such procedures over the past four years, but until now the extracted materials were prepared off-site, resulting in a more lengthy and costly process.
