Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections go directly to the source of your pain, whether it’s tendonitis, a torn ligament, or degenerative joint disease. Once PRP reaches the damaged tissues, it releases growth factors that trigger healing, reduce inflammation, and subsequently, relieves your pain.
When determining whether you qualify for regenerative PRP therapy, the doctors evaluate your overall health and the treatments you’ve already tried. However, the most important factor is the underlying condition causing your pain. In that light, here’s a list of conditions that respond well to PRP injections.
Soft Tissue and Cartilage Injuries
PRP injections are especially effective for treating acute and chronic soft tissue injuries, whether they affect your tendons, ligaments, or muscles. We may also recommend a PRP injection to help tissues like cartilage that heal slowly due to a poor blood supply. Some patients find they can avoid surgery for a torn ligament when they’re treated with PRP injections.
As PRP accelerates healing, you’ll get quick pain relief. Here’s just one example: A study published in a medical journal called Platelets in September 2018 found that patients who were treated with PRP injections for strained calf muscles were able to walk without pain in half the time compared to those who had similar injuries and didn’t receive PRP.
Chronic Pain and Inflammatory Conditions
PRP is a rich source of growth factors, some of which directly regulate the inflammatory process. As a result, treatment with PRP diminishes inflammation in conditions affecting your soft tissues such as tendonitis and Achilles tendinosis.
PRP also helps with one of the most common and difficult-to-treat pain conditions: chronic lower back pain. Various studies and clinical trials covered in a review in the Journal of Spine Surgery in March 2018 reported that patients with lower back pain had a 50% reduction in pain that lasted six months to a year after receiving PRP therapy. They also didn’t experience any side effects. As an added bonus, PRP may do more than relieve your pain; it may also prevent disc degeneration.
Osteoarthritis
Even though researchers are still studying the effect of PRP on diverse health conditions, its use for osteoarthritis has already been established. In fact, the results achieved with PRP may last longer than hyaluronic acid injections, which are often used to treat pain and restore joint mobility in patients with knee osteoarthritis.
Studies show that PRP and hyaluronic acid provide the same degree of pain relief and improved knee function six months after they’re injected. However, patients receiving PRP had significantly better pain relief 12 months after the injection compared to those who got hyaluronic acid.
Reasons You May Not Be a Good Candidate for PRP Injections
Like all types of medical treatments, PRP injections have contraindications or health conditions that may prevent you from getting the treatment.
We may not inject PRP if you have cancer, an active infection, unstable angina, or a blood disorder such as anemia or severe hypovolemia (low blood volume).
To be a good candidate, you must also have normal platelet function, which means that platelet disorders disqualify you from getting PRP treatments. These are a few examples of platelet disorders:
- Thrombocytopenia (low blood platelet count caused by drugs or systemic disease)
- Immune thrombocytopenia (bleeding disorder due to immune dysfunction)
- Acquired platelet dysfunction (causes prolonged bleeding)
- Von Willebrand disease (a hereditary disease that causes easy bruising, mucosal bleeding, and abnormal bleeding after surgery
Patients who take anticoagulants or fibrinolytic drug therapy (to dissolve blood clots) can’t have a PRP injection unless they can temporarily stop taking their medication.
When you continue to suffer from pain or you have an injury that’s slow to heal, PRP injections may be the solution you need.
Precision Pain Care and Rehabilitation has four convenient locations in Richmond Hill – Queens and New Hyde Park, Lindenhurst, and Valley Stream – Long Island. Call the Queens office at (718) 215-1888, or (516) 419-4480 for the Long Island offices, to arrange an appointment with our Interventional Pain Management Specialist, Dr. Jeffrey Chacko.
