Your tendons are fibrous tissues made of collagen that attach your muscles to your bones. These soft tissues are incredibly strong and flexible, but they aren’t elastic. While an injury to your tendons can occur for a variety of reasons including aging, overuse, and stress, they’re often due to structural degeneration in their essential collagen.
As your essential collagens breakdown, your tendon loses stability and strength, which can lead to chronic pain, disability, or tears. These types of tendon injuries are generally referred to as tendinosis or tendinopathy. Tendon injuries associated with inflammation are typically called tendonitis.
Fortunately, advanced treatments like platelet-rich plasma therapy can relieve pain and restore tendon function naturally without the unpleasant side effects of medication or surgery.
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy is a regenerative treatment that stimulates your body’s natural ability to heal in order to repair damage. This innovative therapy works by concentrating the naturally occurring healing substances found in your platelets and plasma to restore your tissue health and function.
Your platelets are natural components found in your blood that play a significant role in your health on a cellular level. In addition to clotting your blood when you’re injured, they also produce growth factor substances involved in tissue regeneration, cell division regulation, and healing promotion.
The liquid element of your blood is plasma. While it’s mostly water, it also contains proteins, antibodies, glucose, and platelets. It contains red cells that transport oxygen throughout your body and white cells that help your body fight infection.
When concentrating platelets and plasma for PRP therapy, their growth factors can be 5-10 times higher than normal.
By leveraging your body’s naturally occurring growth factors, PRP therapy relieves chronic tendon injuries in two ways.
Delivering concentrated amounts of growth factors to your injury site stimulates healing by triggering collagen production in the area. Not only does this new collagen repair damaged tissue, it also increases stability to the tendon and slows the progression of degeneration.
Your concentrated platelets and plasma also contain proteins that alter your pain receptors. This vital component in PRP therapy works to reduce your pain sensations and ease your discomfort.
Your PRP injection is made on-site at South Texas Spinal Clinic using your own blood. After your blood draw, your sample is filtered and centrifuged to concentrate your platelets and plasma.
Your doctor at South Texas Spinal Clinic delivers PRP therapy by injection directly to your injured tendon. You might experience mild discomfort and swelling immediately after your treatment, but this is normal and typically fades within a week as your body’s healing tendencies are stimulated.
In the weeks following your treatment, your pain and inflammation decrease as your body produces new collagen in the area. During this time, stability and range of motion in your tendon increases.
If you’re looking for treatment solutions for a chronic tendon injury, call South Texas Spinal Clinic or book an appointment online to see if PRP therapy is right for you.
