Wednesday, January 13, 2010

More Health - Efficacy of Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Therapy

Here's a link to a couple of studies done on PRP, which is a therapy that harvests your own blood, isolates the platelets, then injects the platelet-rich plasma directly to the injury site. It's relevant to climbers because one of the studies was done on tennis elbow injuries. Unfortunately, the results are dubious and not substantially effective beyond the placebo effect.

Here's a quote, "Although 73 percent of patients given platelet injections improved after a year, compared with 54 percent for steroid injections, Dr. Fu said that was not much success. “Any time you touch a patient, you get 70 percent success,” he said, adding that even placebos give that rate over time."

Anyone try this?

1 comment:

Sof the Froggy said...

Almost did try it! But I backed out when my elbow started to feel a bit better. The downside of this treatment is also the fact that it has to re-inflame the injured area, meaning more pain.... Instead I have been doing regular exercises with the Thera-Bar and that REALLY helps! I highly recommend it as a way to exercise even when not injured.