If you follow college or professional sports, you might have heard of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy. From team-sport athletes to tennis players and golfers (even racehorses!), it has become an increasingly popular treatment to speed healing from injuries. In fact, a 2018 survey of professional and collegiate team physicians found that about 93% of respondents used PRP in their practices to treat musculoskeletal injuries.
PRP is not just for the rich and famous. If you have pain in a joint, ligament, or tendon that has you saying “Enough is enough!” Monad Doc has brought PRP and prolotherapy to your community.
What Is PRP?
It’s a type of regenerative orthopedic therapy that stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize and heal damaged tissues. At Monad Doc, our prolotherapy treatments include both standard dextrose/lidocaine injections and PRP.
In standard prolotherapy, a combination of dextrose and lidocaine is injected into the painful area to stimulate healing. PRP, on the other hand, involves injecting platelet-rich plasma extracted from your own blood. We draw blood from you, process that blood in a centrifuge to concentrate the platelets, extract the platelet-rich plasma, and then inject it into the affected area. Those platelets are an even more powerful immune-system stimulator than dextrose and lidocaine.
When We Consider PRP Therapy
For patients who have tried prolotherapy and are not achieving the pain relief they wanted, we consider PRP as the next step in treatment. Patients may need more than one treatment, depending on the condition and their response.
PRP and prolotherapy are options for a range of musculoskeletal conditions, including neck and back pain, repetitive stress injuries, knee and ankle pain, and ligament sprains and instability. At Monad Doc, many patients come to us with osteoarthritis, as well as pain in their shoulders, rotator cuffs, low backs, and feet.
We also commonly get complaints from older patients about debilitating arthritis in the basal thumb joint. When the condition is advanced, patients can lose their grip strength and thumb opposition (the ability to bring the thumb across the hand to meet the fingers).
PRP is a good option for these conditions, depending on the severity. I encourage patients to seek an evaluation early so we can identify the problem and treat it before it becomes severe and recalcitrant.
When We Wouldn’t Recommend PRP
There are conditions that aren’t amenable to PRP or prolotherapy. For example, we wouldn’t treat gout with PRP or prolotherapy. Gout is already a fiery inflammatory condition. It is treatable, just with other medication modalities.
Fractured bones also aren't amenable to PRP or prolotherapy, and neither are prosthetic joints.
What Makes Someone a Good Candidate?
At Monad Doc, we generally consider PRP and prolotherapy for injury pain lasting three months or more. Often, you’ve already tried rest, medication, and physical therapy, and the problem persists.
During your initial consultation, I gather your story, including who you are and what health issues you have. Then I ask about the injury: how and when it happened, how it feels, what treatments you’ve tried, and when it feels worse. Have you lost function? Then I examine your body and look for swelling, range of motion, tenderness, strength, sensation, ligament laxity, and instability. We will consider imaging if we think it will contribute to the decision-making process.
Rheumatic and autoimmune diseases that are well managed with medications are not a problem when treating chronic joint pain with PRP or prolotherapy. We have seen excellent results in these patients.
Anticoagulant medications are not a problem, either. Studies have shown no added risk to anticoagulated patients.
A good candidate might already have an understanding of prolotherapy and PRP and know that these treatments work best with rest and rehab. Rest is an essential component, and we’ll discuss how you should protect the treated area during your recovery. Often, physical therapy will be prescribed as part of your recovery. Together, we’ll come up with a plan for you.
We can’t promise you outcomes, as we can’t know how your body will respond to treatment. We make the best decisions we can, and if you are interested, we give your body a chance to heal.
Why Early Evaluation Matters
If you have a painful joint, it’s important to get it evaluated as early as possible because small injuries have less damage and heal better. Left untreated, they predictably get worse and sometimes are so bad that nothing will help except surgery.
Remember: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
An Osteopathic Approach to Your Care
Giving the body a chance to heal itself is a central tenet of my osteopathic training. At Monad Doc, we take a conservative approach to healing and make treatment decisions with each patient. We’ll give you the information you need and offer options so the decision we make together is as satisfying as possible.
Contact Monad Doc to schedule your consultation today!