If PRP Helps Collegiate and Professional Athletes, Why Shouldn’t Weekend Athletes Try It?
The use of PRP to treat joint, tendon, ligament, and muscle injuries is becoming well known, thanks to exposure from professional athletes. A recent survey of Collegiate and Professional Sports Physicians shows that most team doctors are using PRP procedures on elite athletes.
You may not be a NFL-caliber athlete, but read on to see the sports team physician survey results, and learn how you can still benefit from Regenexx PRP procedures that are likely even better orthopedic PRP procedures than many elite athletes get.
What is Platelet Rich Plasma or PRP?
Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) and Platelet Lysate are Platelet procedures that contain healing growth factors from your own blood that promote your body’s natural ability to repair itself. Platelet injections have a stimulating effect on the repair cells within the targeted area, making those cells work harder to perform their natural job of healing the body.
Defining the Use of PRP in Elite Athletes by Team Physicians
Approximately 93% of team physicians said they use PRP in a survey distributed to team physicians from the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, and the “Power 5” Division I conferences of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Here is a summary of findings as they appeared in the 2018 Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine Study [1]:
- 46 physicians responded and 70% reported no complications from PRP procedures, with “ injection site pain” being the most common complication (26%)
- The Results showed that complications beyond “injection site pain” occur with less than 5% frequency, demonstrating that serious complications from PRP injections were extremely rare
- Among those team doctors surveyed, physicians from NFL teams treated the most players with PRP; and, physicians from NHL teams treated the least amount of players with PRP
- Surprisingly, despite frequent PRP usage reported by team physicians, no concordance exists across surgeons regarding the appropriate timing or frequency of use with PRP. Team physicians inject athletes with PRP as the initial treatment, an intermediate treatment, and a last-resort treatment, with no consensus regarding the number of injections that each condition warrants.
How Regenexx PRP Procedures are Different
Regenexx physicians have extensive training in precise, image-guided injections of your body’s own healing agents to treat orthopedic issues. Consider these differences in Regenexx vs. other PRP therapy clinics, including those treating elite athletes:
- Regenexx® doctors have performed more than 142,000 highly specific image-guided PRP and/or bone marrow concentrate procedures
- Regenexx patient outcomes are tracked in a registry, and with that information, Regenexx physicians provide transparent outcome data for those who may be considering PRP procedures. View outcome data.
- Because of its concentration levels of platelets, Regenexx’s Super Concentrated PRP takes on an amber color. It has been shown to deliver up to 10 – 40x times more platelet concentrations than the standard “bloody” PRP.
Most clinics develop PRP by running it through a simple bedside centrifuge machine. Regenexx labs take the extra step to separate and concentrate all of the blood’s platelets, and remove the other blood cells that do not help with healing. Regenexx does this because our lab tests show that white and red blood cells have an inhibiting effect on the same stem cells the platelets are attempting to stimulate.
Conclusion
The use of PRP to treat joint, tendon, ligament, and muscle injuries is becoming well known, thanks to exposure from professional athletes. We’ve seen from a survey of Collegiate and Professional Sports Physicians that even the most elite athletes may not be getting the most elite PRP treatments, unless they’re being treated by Regenexx.
If you have joint pain and think PRP might help, find out if you’re a candidate today –Tap the “TALK TO AN EXPERT” BUTTON below.
