Utah doctors want to know if a patient's own stem cells might save them from amputation.

The University of Utah is starting a unique clinical trial using volunteer patients who are at a critical stage of their vascular disease.

Surgeons may have to amputate a limb for a number of reasons. Patients might be soldiers, or victims of an accident, or they might have what is called peripheral vascular disease. Diabetes, age, smoking, high cholesterol and genetics all play a role in how this disease blocks vessels going to the lower limbs. In critical stages, patients are at the end of their rope.

Dr. Larry Kraiss, a vascular surgeon for University Health Care, said, "There is really nothing else that is available to them. The bypass is not going to work. Angioplasty isn't going to work, or that has been tried and failed. So we're talking about people who have no other options to consider except an amputation."

This unique clinical trial is about to give them one more option. It's experimental, but it's an option that in animal studies has shown how stem cells injected into areas affected by the disease re-grow blood vessels.

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