If you have a knee injury, Achilles pain, or any joint or tendon, you understand that it can be a long, drawn out process of recovery, especially if you had to get surgery. Well, if you’re someone that doesn’t want to experience long recovery or invasive surgery, there’s good news: a popular treatment called platelet rich plasma (PRP) therapy. It is used to speed up the healing process by manipulating your body’s own healing abilities.
What Injuries Can PRP Be Used For?
PRP therapy can treat many injuries with great clinical outcomes. Currently there are studies that support its use for treating a whole bevy of ailments. PRP is rapidly emerging as a treatment for knee ACL and MCL injuries such as ligament tears, knee pain, osteoarthritis (especially of the knee), shoulder rotator cuff tears, knee tendonitis and tennis elbow.
As PRP therapy is a fairly new treatment here in the UK, increased research into this area is vastly underway. Within the next few years we expect to see increased blinded placebo studies to give the treatment even more validity. To date there have been several cohort studies – as well as anecdotal evidence showing the increased effectiveness of the treatment. This alongside fantastic results we have personally seen in our clinics here at Dynamic Osteopaths & Regenerative Medicine in Solihull and Birmingham. Based on the success we’ve seen with our patients we expect this treatment to grow in popularity rapidly over the next couple years, 1) due to the clinical effectiveness and 2) due to the treatment being natural and holding not side effects.
Effectiveness of PRP treatment
Many professional athletes who make a living from the health of their bodies and require high end performance regularly have PRP treatment, hence the extreme popularity within sports medicine. Many athletes such as Tiger Woods who received 4 treatments of PRP therapy after knee surgery in 2009, and Kobe Bryant who went all the way to Germany from New York for a similar treatment in 2013. Furthermore, this great treatment is now beginning to grow further popularity within the general public as it is becoming more known.
PRP Explained
PRP treatment is very simple to perform and is carried out ‘in office’ for the treatment, in a simple day case, with minimal downtime. A small sample of your blood will be taken from your arm into a vial. The blood is then spun down in a special type of centrifuge that concentrates the blood’s own platelets, Platelets ar then further concentrated and this is then injected into symptomatic area.
Blood platelets are an important part of the healing process, they attach to the injury and release growth that stimulate stem cells and promote tissue healing.
The patient will then have up to 8x more platelets to heal tissue damage.
Who is a Candidate for PRP treatment?
PRP is open to anyone who is suffering acute injury or chronic pain. Sometimes injuries or arthritis do not respond to standard conservative measures, and/or patients are just simply hoping to avoid surgery. PRP therapy could be just what you need.
PRP can treat multiple injuries, particularly to your knees and tendons. Activities such as playing football, jogging, weight lifting, or even everyday things like climbing stairs or walking can be vastly improved!
You may also want to consider PRP therapy if you have ongoing discomfort from previous injuries to a joint, or being involved in an accident.
You can schedule a FREE PRP consultation here at Dynamic Osteopaths in Solihull to discuss your options or to determine if you’re a suitable candidate for this new procedure.
Risk Factors
Minimal side effects are associated as PRP therapy uses the patient’s own blood, and because of that there is very minimal risk for any kind of rejection. Overall this is a highly convenient procedure done in office in our office, and lasts last that an hour.
Some patients complain about a dull ache at the site of injection, which is common with any injection procedure. Also, as PRP uses a needle there is always a chance that an artery or vein could be damaged and cause a blood clot. If that happens, the clot is treated like any other clot with blood thinners, but risk factors like these are very low and should always be discussed with your before moving forward.
If you would like to find out more on how PRP can help you get in touch or schedule a free consultation. Living with joint pain just isn’t worth it, and new treatment options are now available.
Info@dynamicoateopaths.com
01564330773