Woman has knee re-grown in pioneering treatment (From Daily Echo)

Ground-breaking technique to harvest body tissue ends Liz Coveney's pain

12:24pm Tuesday 27th September 2011 in News By Melanie Adams, Health Reporter

Liz Coveney

A HAMPSHIRE woman has become one of the first people in the country to have regenerative surgery.

Liz Coveney is one of only a handful of people to have the treatment to repair cartilage damage in their knee.

The 50-year-old mum-of-one from Hythe had suffered ongoing pain in her right knee for the last six years and before the new treatment feared the only way to stop arthritis was to have a knee replacement.

But doctors in Southampton took cartilage from a different part of her body and sent it to laboratories in Belguim where the 15,000 cells were harvested to grow more cartilage cells, more than six million in total, which were then brought back to the UK for Liz’s surgery.

The cells were put on a small patch which was stitched on to the hole in her knee cartilage, where the cells will continue to grow over the next 12 months.

It will not be until the year is up that doctors will know if it has worked, during which time Liz must follow a rehabilitation regime to give it the best chance of success.

The Spire Southampton Hospital has become the first hospital in the country to offer the revolutionary technique. The surgery, which takes less than an hour, costs £18,301.

Liz, who runs her own finance brokerage, said: “This is using bits of me to repair bits of me.

“I didn’t have to think too hard about doing it because if there was a chance of reducing the discomfort I was feeling, without the need for a knee replacement, I knew I had to go for it.

“Within just a few weeks I have already noticed that I can use my right leg in the car without any discomfort and I can walk up and down the stairs with drastically less pain.

“It is an absolutely superb procedure and I would recommend it to anyone because it saves having bits replaced and chopped up.”