3 Problems That PRP Can Help Resolve

Modern medicine has made some great advances in treating musculoskeletal injuries, but this interventional approach has its limitations. Today, we’re beginning to understand that one of the solutions may have been under our noses (or in our blood, in this case) all along. 

Through platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, we’re tapping the power of your own platelets to help your body heal and repair itself from within.

Valiant Life Medical is an integrative and alternative medicine practice that places great emphasis on working with your body, rather than around it. Our team understands that humans are designed with great regenerative resources, and our role is to harness and redirect these resources, which perfectly describes PRP therapy.

Here, we take a look at three different scenarios in which PRP therapy can play an incredibly valuable role.

1. Arthritis

About one in four adults in the United States has doctor-diagnosed arthritis, but this number is likely much higher as many people have undiagnosed arthritis.

Arthritis is a catchall term for more than 100 different conditions that cause joint pain and inflammation, but a large share of arthritis sufferers have osteoarthritis (OA), which is a degenerative condition that typically develops after years of wear and tear on your joints.

With OA, the cartilage in your joints begins to break down, which leaves your bones to rub together painfully. There’s no cure for osteoarthritis, as your cartilage isn’t vascularized, which means there are no blood vessels in this tissue that can deliver regenerative resources.

Through PRP therapy, we tap the platelets in your blood, which contain powerful growth factors and proteins, and redirect them into your painful joints. After we inject the platelet concentrate, they release growth factors, which encourage cellular regeneration at the same time as the PRP helps to reduce inflammation.

2. Sports injuries

If you engage in an active lifestyle, you’re probably familiar with the stresses that sports can place on certain connective tissues, especially your tendons, muscles, and ligaments. If you damage any of these tissues, say a tendon tear or ligament sprain, we can use PRP therapy to help you heal more quickly.

In using PRP therapy, our goal is to avoid surgical intervention by allowing your body to heal its own tissues on a cellular level.

3. Surgery

While avoiding surgery is always our goal, there are times when you may incur an injury that requires surgical repair, such as complete tears of the rotator cuff in your shoulder or the anterior cruciate ligament in your knee.

Once the orthopaedic surgeon has reattached these tissues, PRP can play a very helpful role in helping the damaged areas to heal more quickly, and more strongly, after surgery.

For most athletes, a return to sports is one of the primary goals of undergoing surgery in the first place, but the recovery haul can be long and arduous. With PRP therapy, we can accelerate this forced “timeout,” and get you back to the active lifestyle you so enjoy in less time.

These are just three examples of how PRP therapy can make a valuable contribution to your ability to move freely and without pain.

If you’d like to learn more about PRP therapy or experience for yourself how powerful these treatments can be, contact our office in Fort Worth, Texas, to set up a consultation.