If you have a tendon or ligament injury and traditional methods have not provided relief, then platelet-rich-plasma (PRP) therapy may be the solution. A solution comprised of platelets and growth factors from your own blood and injected at the site of an injury, PRP treatments have the ability to restart your body’s healing processes. This hallmark of regenerative medicine has even proven a viable alternative for surgeries in cases of shoulder, knee, back, and hip injuries, in some cases.
Understanding Platelet-Rich Plasma
Platelet-rich plasma is an extract from your own blood. Plasma is the liquid part of your blood, and platelets are one of the types of “cells” in your blood, along with red and white blood cells. Using a centrifuging process, the plasma platelets are separated and concentrated. Then, the platelet-concentrated plasma is injected to the site of an injury.
PRP injections maximize the body’s natural ability to heal itself, bringing 5-10x more growth factors to the site of the injury. Treatment with platelet-rich plasma may help with joint pain, arthritis, old sprain injuries, muscle injury, and recovery from ligament and tendon injuries. There is also exciting success with using PRP therapy to treat Osgood-Schlatter’s disease in children.
Platelet-rich-plasma treatments have provided our patients with an exciting option for rehabilitation and recovery from injury. It is an effective complementary therapy to physical therapy, massage, exercise, and more. This regenerative injection solution to chronic pain and injury allows us to create treatment programs for our patients that don’t involve invasive procedures or lean on opioid prescriptions.
How Does Our Body Heal an Injury?
When our body is injured, it runs a healing program that does most of its work in the first 3-6 weeks. If the injured area is still tender 2 months later, your body did an incomplete job. That is why you might have a “partial tear” of your rotator cuff.
If you want your body to “re-run” the healing program to further heal from an injury, the tissue needs to be re-injured. When this is done using a dry needle, it is called dry needling. When dextrose and Novocain are injected, it is called prolotherapy.
How Does Platelet Rich Plasma Work?
When you were 3 years old and fell and skinned your knee, momma put some love on it, and then your bleeding platelets broke open and made you a scab. Three or four weeks later, when the scab fell off, you had new skin underneath. When platelet-rich plasma is injected into an injured tendon, and the scab falls out of the tendon in 3-4 weeks, this will leave you with new tendon and fascia strings holding you together.
Other Uses for Platelet Rich Plasma
Platelet rich plasma injections have been shown to be helpful for the treatment of joints damaged by osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, ligament injuries, and tendon injuries. It may help speed healing times for bone injuries, and recent research indicates it may prove useful for skin wounds in printed graft form. The cosmetic industry is also exploring the potential of PRP therapy for hair and facial skin.
If you’re suffering from a painful tissue injury, old or new, joint damage or a degenerative condition, consider the benefits of platelet-rich plasma as an alternative to invasive procedures. Relieve your pain by healing your pain, the natural way.
Contact Us for Cincinnati Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) Information