Hi, my name is Kari Rezac, I’m a sports medicine physician here at Tahoe Forest Health System. You may have heard of PRP, or platelet-rich plasma, but what is it?
So our blood is made up of a bunch of different components: one is plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and then you also have platelets that are in your plasma as well. The plasma and the platelets, particularly the platelets, they help kind of clog the cuts that you have, so instead of bleeding you have a nice new scab. As part of those platelets, they also have growth factors in them as well, the growth factors also help in healing and help that process, so that your cut kind of goes away eventually.
PRP, which is of course a super concentrated form, contains about 94% of these platelets in plasma, so it’s kind of a super concentrated form of all those nice growth factors that we like to heal things. So this high concentration within the PRP makes it very, very effective to help heal chronic tendinopathy, these subacute, or kind of mid-term, injuries that you may have, or even the acute injuries that you may have.
So for PRP, or platelet-rich plasma, this is how the process works. We have to draw your blood, so you drink a lot of water the day before so you’re nice and hydrated. Once we draw your blood, we spin it down into a centrifuge. The centrifuge separates the blood from the plasma. At the top, we have a really nice golden yellow liquid, and that is part of the plasma and the PRP. We take that liquid and we pull it off the top, so now all you have is the yellow part, and then we inject it into the part that is the problem, so your tendon or your joints, and that helps us get all the good growth factors and the healing right to the spot that we need to get it to.
So after a platelet-rich plasma, or PRP, injection, you can expect some discomfort in the first few days afterwards, because it’s pro-inflammatory, so it’s trying to bring inflammation into that area. After that, there is a proliferation period, where your body is trying to make more nice tissue, that it’s going to lay down really nice healthy tissue. And then for up to 3 months you could have benefit, that’s called remodeling, so where your body takes the nice healthy tissue that you made and remodels it into really nice strong tissue that we’re hoping for.
After the PRP injection, our team is here to help you walk through every step of the process, from the injection all the way to when you’re hopefully feeling better at the very end. This is one of the many services we offer at Tahoe Forest Sports Medicine. We’re happy to walk you through any of the processes, and we’re here to help you if you need us.
My name is Dr. Kari Rezac, thanks so much for watching.
