Using your body to heal your body may seem like a far-fetched concept. However, that’s precisely how regenerative medicine treatments, such as platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy work.
Unlike medications that focus on your symptoms, regenerative therapies focus on healing the problem causing your pain. One of the most well-known forms of regenerative medicine is using bone marrow transplants to treat diseases like leukemia. However, there are several other types of regenerative therapies that offer life-changing results, especially when it comes to treating pain.
As a committed interventional pain management provider, Vladimir Fiks, MD, continually expands his medical education to ensure he consistently delivers exceptional patient care, including cutting-edge treatments like PRP therapy.
If you have a pain-related condition, here’s how PRP therapy at Advanced Pain Management Center in Portland, Oregon, could help.
Your plasma, or the watery portion of blood, makes up approximately 55% of your blood volume. The remaining 45% includes substances like red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Each of these substances plays a role in healing, but your platelets are the powerhouses.
Platelets are possibly best known for their ability to clot blood. However, they also contain essential growth factors involved in the healing process, and they trigger cell production and tissue regeneration. Platelet-rich plasma therapy makes use of these vital resources.
To perform PRP therapy, we first draw some of your blood. Then we put the sample in a centrifuge machine, which helps separate your platelets from the rest of the components in your blood. Then we take the resulting serum and inject it into the diseased or damaged areas.
As the PRP triggers tissue regeneration and cell production in the treatment site, your pain should decrease as your body heals itself. And this targeted treatment comes with few risks of adverse reactions, because the injected substances come from your own body.
Dr. Fiks uses PRP to treat a wide range of acute and chronic pain conditions all over the body, including:
You can receive PRP therapy during a routine office visit, and it requires little if any downtime. However, you won’t see immediate results from your treatment. Instead, the PRP activates the healing process, which means you should have some mild inflammation and discomfort as the cells in your body get to work.
Over the following weeks and months, you should notice your symptoms improving as healthy new cells return to the area and function gets restored. Depending on your pain-related condition, Dr. Fiks could recommend a series of PRP injections to provide optimal results.
Do you have a pain-related condition? Platelet-rich plasma therapy may be able to help. To learn more, call 971-233-4199 or book an appointment online with Advanced Pain Management Center today.
