PRP Therapy Is a Boon for Patients With Arthritic Joint Pain

Your world used to be much larger, but arthritic joints have shrunk it considerably. You’re not alone — more than 92 million adults in the United States have doctor-diagnosed arthritis or arthritis symptoms, which mean joint pain and inflammation.

If you want to get back out into the world without aching and stiff joints, the good news is that recent advances in regenerative medicine are paving the way.

More specifically, the team at Sunshine Spine and Pain Specialist, under the direction of Dr. Amanda Fernandez and Dr. Peter Fernandez, offers platelet-rich plasma (PRP) joint injections. This therapy is helping scores of people struggling with arthritis regain pain-free movement. Here’s a look.

Arthritis — a difficult problem

The term arthritis is really a catchall for more than 100 diseases that lead to joint pain and inflammation. 

While there are different types of arthritis, there is no cure for the disease in any of its forms. Once arthritis destroys the tissues inside the joint, the damage is done and difficult to overcome.

That is especially true of the most common form of arthritis — osteoarthritis (OA). Also called a wear-and-tear disease, OA occurs when cartilage inside your joint breaks down, leaving your bones unprotected. Since cartilage doesn’t enjoy good vascularization (blood vessels), the tissue doesn’t receive the resources necessary to rebuild itself.

As a result, most treatments for arthritis only address the symptoms, or they’re highly aggressive, such as artificial joint replacement. Until now.

Enter regenerative medicine and PRP therapy

The brass ring of modern medicine is to find ways for damaged tissues and organs to regenerate or repair themselves, which is the definition of regenerative medicine.

Fortunately, we’ve successfully found ways to do this using powerful regenerative resources already found in the human body, namely stem cells and platelets.

Understanding PRP

Since we’re discussing PRP therapy, let's take a look at the power of platelets. These flat cells are found in your blood and are primarily responsible for clotting. Once they accomplish this, they continue their work by initiating the wound healing cascade.

The wound healing cascade starts with releasing growth factors — proteins and hormones that encourage cell proliferation and vascularization and that control inflammatory responses.

With PRP therapy, we draw a sample of your blood. Then, using the RICHPLAT ORTHO™ PRP system, we isolate your platelets and re-inject them back into your damaged tissues.

The concentration of platelets provides the damaged tissues inside your arthritic joints with the tools they need to rebuild and repair themselves.

To understand how successful PRP therapy can be for OA, one study on more than 250 patients with knee OA found that PRP injections provided significant pain and flexion improvement, especially after multiple injections.

If you’d like to see for yourself how PRP therapy can help you regain the active lifestyle you once enjoyed, we invite you to schedule an appointment at our office in Sarasota, Florida. You can call 941-867-7463 or use our online booking option.