Whether you’re dealing with a ligament injury in your knee or you have a shoulder that’s grown stiff and painful thanks to repetitive use, you want answers — and solutions — sooner rather than later.
The human body often sticks to its own pace when it comes to healing, which may not be fast enough for your goals. Fortunately, there’s a way to speed up the healing process so you come out the other side, more quickly and stronger than ever.
Called platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román and the team at No Mercy Sports Medicine have been offering this regenerative approach to healing for years, with great success. In fact, whatever your musculoskeletal injury, chances are good that PRP therapy can play an important role in your treatment plan.
The human body is often described as self-sufficient, which means it has everything it needs to function, including resources that repair damage.
A great example of this is what happens when you cut yourself. Say you slice your finger with a knife. Depending upon the depth and length of the injury, the bleeding should subside fairly quickly before the laceration scabs over. This allows the healing process to begin and, within a week, you’re pleased to see that new skin has grown underneath the scab and all is well.
Behind this impressive process are your platelets, which are flat cell fragments found in your blood. When you injure yourself, platelets arrive on the scene and quickly stop the bleeding by plugging the breach. Once the bleeding stops, your platelets release growth factors that commence the wound healing cascade described above.
With PRP therapy, we’ve found a way to harness the impressive power of your platelets and redirect it to areas that need more support.
During the procedure, we draw some of your own blood and, using a special centrifuge, we separate out the platelets. Then, we mix a concentrated batch of platelets into some of your plasma and inject the platelet-rich solution into your damaged tissues.
As we mentioned, your body is likely working on the damage already, but at its own pace. With PRP therapy, we’re simply redirecting and amplifying these efforts for faster tissue healing.
To give you an idea about the success of PRP therapy, one study found that PRP accelerates skin wound healing by regulating inflammation and increasing epithelialization.
Modulating inflammation is important when you have a musculoskeletal injury as it can reduce your pain and speed up healing. As for epithelialization, epithelial cells exist throughout your body and they come together to form layers that become tissues. By increasing these cells in your damaged tissues with PRP, new tissues can regrow more rapidly and more strongly.
Another advantage of PRP therapy is that the treatment is autologous, which means we’re using resources from your own body. As a result, your body not only readily accepts PRP treatments, but they’re also quite safe.
Thanks to its efficacy, ease of use, and safety, we believe that PRP therapy can contribute a good deal to most any musculoskeletal injury treatment plan. To determine whether PRP therapy is right for you, please contact No Mercy Sports Medicine today by calling our office in Miami, Florida, at 305-614-6757.
