Stem Cell Use For Neuropathic Pain

Many of my patients complain of chronic, debilitating eye pain. They have been dismissed by many optometrists and eye surgeons as their eyes do not "look bad." This can be very frustrating to patients as they feel as if there is no hope.

Many of these patients have "Pain Without Stain," which is another way of saying "Neuropathic Eye Pain."

The issue here is that the nerves innervating the cornea and the tissues around the eye are firing for unclear reasons. The cornea and surrounding tissues do not show signs of dryness, but the patient has all the symptoms of patients with severe dry eye.

We have started using autologous, adipose derived stem cells to help with dry eyes due to meibomian gland dysfunction and autoimmune disease. I have been in communication with Dr. Russell Vickers of Australia who reports he has had significant success in treating patients' Neuropathic Eye Pain with their own autologous, adipose derived stem cells.

Here are some recent papers to help patients understand the issue and a possible treatment option. 

We are hopeful this will work better than the current treatments for neuropathic eye pain, which can have side effects as discussed in my post about Neurontic, GABA, Naltrexone.
http://eyedoc2020.blogspot.com/2018/03/neruopathic-eye-pain-what-is-it-and-how.html?q=natrexone


Here are some interesting papers:





If you have further questions about our protocol, please feel free to email Allie at: ABlankenship@voeyedr.com


Amitriptyline 25-50mg/day
Gabapentin  (total 1500-3200mg/day
Naltrexone

Subject #	Sex	Age (years)	Cause	Diagnosis	Duration	Quality	Pain score*pre-treatment	Pain score†post-treatment at 6 months	Pain medication pre-treatment (daily consumption)	Pain medication††post-treatment at 6 months
1	Female	45	Tooth extraction	Atypical odontalgia	1 year, 4 months	Burning Aching Sharp	7	4	Amitriptyline 25 mg Gabapentin 1,500 mg	Amitriptyline 25 mg Gabapentin 1,500 mg
2	Female	80	Tooth extraction	Atypical odontalgia	4 months	Aching Sharp	9	1	Analgesics 6 tabs§	Nil
3	Female	47	Idiopathic	Facial neuropathic pain	1 year	Burning Aching	4	0	Amitriptyline 37.5 mg Gabapentin 2,400 mg	Amitriptyline 25 mg Gabapentin 600 mg
4	Female	52	Tooth extraction	Atypical odontalgia	2 years, 8 months	Burning Aching	7	6	Amitriptyline 50 mg Gabapentin 400 mg	Amitriptyline 25 mg Gabapentin 400 mg
5#	Female	65	Idiopathic	Atypical odontalgia	8 months	Sharp	8	7 (1 month)	Nil	Nil (1 month)
6	Female	66	Tooth extraction	Atypical odontalgia	18 months	Burning Sharp	8	8	Gabapentin 1,200 mg	Gabapentin 1,200 mg
7	Female	62	Dental implants	Atypical odontalgia	5 years	Burning	8	3	Gabapentin 600 mg	Nil
8	Female	61	Dental crowns	Atypical odontalgia	2 years, 5 months	Burning Aching	7	5	Amitriptyline 25 mg	Amitriptyline 25 mg
9	Female	27	Idiopathic	Trigeminal autonomic cephalalgia	6 years, 5 months	Sharp	7	2	Gabapentin 3,200 mg