PRP therapy

Interesting article on the subject

Tiger Woods, Rafael Nadal and Hines Ward turned to it. It carries minimal risk and may ease pain without invasive procedures or drugs.

Platelet rich plasma therapy is catching the attention of pro athletes and ordinary people whose orthopedic injuries haven't been cured by traditional treatments such as surgery or steroids.

With PRP treatments, a small amount of a patient's own blood is spun in a centrifuge, creating up to a 500 percent concentration of platelets.

Those platelets are then injected into the injured site. Because platelets release growth factors, they're thought to speed the repair of wounded tissue.

"It just makes sense," said Dr. Anne Truong of Truong Rehabilitation Center, the only physician in the area who offers PRP therapy.

Truong said she uses PRP in her Spotsylvania County office primarily to treat tendon and ligament injuries. She's been using PRP therapy for two years and is so confident in the procedure that she has treated her co-workers, her husband and herself with PRP. Truong said she had a torn meniscus--a cartilage injury--in her knee that she treated with PRP.

"I know how the kind of pain my patients feel is," Truong said. "My PA [physician assistant] injected me, and it helped. I returned to work the next day."

Truong predicts that PRP treatments will eventually replace surgery as the primary treatment for many injuries. But more research is needed to verify the therapy's effectiveness. So far, the research is limited--and mixed.

In January, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study reporting that PRP injections are no more effective than saltwater.

People in the study had injuries to the Achilles tendon, which account for 30 percent to 50 percent of all activity-related injuries.

Compared to those injected with saline, the PRP group did not show any significant improvement in pain and activity.

But another study, published by the American Journal of Sports Medicine in February, reported improvement in patients with tennis elbow who were treated with PRP.

The control group, injected with steroids, did not have the lasting effects that PRP patients did, researchers found. The condition of the control group's joints deteriorated, while the PRP patients continued to improve.

PRP was found to reduce pain and significantly increase function. But the authors concluded that further follow-up to the trial should be conducted to find possible costs and harms, as well as benefits, of PRP.

The two studies represent the first rigorous trials of PRP.

'IT REALLY WORKED'

Despite the limited findings, Truong said she's confident in the therapy. Her PRP patients have experienced overwhelmingly positive results, she said.

Melissa Lampiris said she received a PRP treatment from Truong in December 2009 for her torn rotator cuff. By April, she said, she had fully recovered. She became such a believer in the therapy that she recommended the treatment to her husband--who also had torn his rotator cuff.

"My advice is to definitely do it if you need to," Lampiris said. "It's noninvasive and has no side effects. It's better than surgery. It really worked for me."

Truong's colleague, chiropractor Bill Ward, also was satisfied with the results of PRP.

An avid tennis player, Ward said his knee began hurting during a match three years ago. The pain didn't get better. He had suffered a torn meniscus, and when doctors operated, they found that his knee had virtually no cartilage left.

Ward said the surgeon's advice was to avoid activity that would impact the area, making playing tennis impossible and a more sedentary lifestyle inevitable.

Ward said he originally treated his knee with injections to cushion the joint and with glucosamine sulfate supplements, which are meant to help arthritic joints.

But it was only after trying PRP that Ward said he was able to return to his active lifestyle.

"Before, my knee would always feel like it was going to give way, and there was always a lot of popping and clicking and, of course, pain," Ward said. "All that has pretty much vanished since the injection. I can now run and be more active. I am even playing tennis again."

These results don't surprise Truong.

"We've had 100 percent success," she said.

Courtesy: Fredericksburg.com