Dr. Sankish Kumar

Platelet rich plasma therapy is an extremely promising treatment for anyone with a bone, nerve, muscle, tendons and ligaments injury, especially the athletes. In simple words, it’s a non-surgical way to heal bone injuries like fractures and chronic wounds. What happens here is that Growth factors (GFs) in platelet- rich plasma are used to mend tendons, bones, and ligaments without surgery and stimulate cellular activities that help in the actual healing.

Whereas doctors have used PRP therapy since the mid 1990s to aid bone healing post spinal injuries and for recovery after plastic surgery, it has only been a couple of years now that the benefits of PRP are being explored to treat sports related stubborn injuries like knee tendonitis and tennis elbow. And, the results have been more than just good.

How is PRP therapy done?
The treatment is fairly straightforward and easy to perform. In this doctors take a small quantity of a patient's blood- about 30 millilitres- and allow it to spin it in a centrifuge in order to separate the platelet-rich plasma from the other components of the blood.

• Following this, they inject the concentrated platelets into the injured area.
• In theory, the growth factors that are secreted by the platelets spur bone or connective tissue recovery.
• The high concentration of platelets (3 to 10 times that of normal blood) spurs the growth of new soft-tissue or bone cells.
• Because the concentrated platelet cocktail is injected where blood would rarely go otherwise, it can deliver pinpointed healing.
• The technique can also help regenerate ligament and tendon fibres, which shortens recovery time and prevents surgical intervention.

How does PRP work?
The theory behind PRP is that the body can't on its own transport enough of the growth factors to the area of a bone fracture or a chronic tear in a tendon and formation of scar tissue that can happen in Achilles tendonitis, for example. But by injecting a concentrated platelet cocktail, the transportation of nutrients and growth factors to the site of the injury is enhanced, allowing the body to heal.

The benefits of PRP

1. Most people like PRP because it’s non-surgical and uses the body’s own cells to heal.
2. PRP is fast becoming a treatment of choice for treating tendonitis and similar ailments, not just in sportspeople, but also the general population.
3. PRP is also becoming the first option before surgery because of its cost and the ease of the procedure.
4. There is little chance for rejection of the platelets or an allergic reaction because the platelets are extracted from the patient’s own blood.
5. The injection takes only about 20 minutes and is followed by a considerably shorter recovery time than after surgery.

In short, PRP has the potential to revolutionise not just sports medicine but all of the orthopaedics. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult an orthopedist.