Elite athletes whose livelihoods depend on maintaining an exceptional level of physical fitness and functioning can’t afford to sit on the injury list for long. When they sprain an ankle, pull a hamstring, or develop a repetitive stress injury, they consult the best physicians using the most advanced technology to repair their injuries quickly and safely.
In California’s South Bay area, they come to Coastal Ortho.
Our experienced team of board-certified orthopedic surgeons specializes in all types of musculoskeletal injuries, with a particular emphasis on sports medicine. Whether you’re a professional athlete, a college recruit, a weekend warrior, or a nonathlete, you want the best treatment and the quickest recovery.
For many, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy fits the bill. Here’s how it works.
Your body has an incredible capacity to heal itself, especially soft tissues like ligaments, tendons, and muscles — or the very tissues that are so often damaged during musculoskeletal injuries, such as sprains, tendonitis, and trauma caused by orthopedic surgeries.
Your natural healing processes kick in immediately following an injury. The first stage is inflammation, where your body increases blood flow to the injured area, leading to swelling and redness. You also experience emerging pain, your body's way of signaling that it needs to rest — and that you need to protect the affected area.
Next comes the proliferative phase, where your body’s corrective mechanisms begin to rebuild damaged tissues. Fibroblasts, or collagen-synthesizing cells, flood the area and work diligently to repair the wound.
The final stage, remodeling, involves the strengthening and reorganizing of new tissue. Depending on the severity of your injury, your age, and your treatment protocol, the entire healing process can take weeks or months.
While your body is innately equipped to heal, it doesn’t always heal quickly or completely without help. This is where PRP therapy comes into play.
PRP therapy is a regenerative medicine approach to treating musculoskeletal injuries. It uses components from your own blood to stimulate a more robust healing response.
Traditional healing techniques, like physical therapy, medication, and arthroscopic surgery, are invaluable treatments that focus on managing symptoms and repairing damage. PRP therapy, on the other hand, aims to boost your body’s natural healing process.
PRP is pretty simple. We take a small sample of your blood and place it in a centrifuge, which separates the blood components. Once we have a concentrated serum of plasma (the liquid part of your blood) and platelets (the cells that help your blood clot during wound healing), we inject it into your injured area. As the PRP meets your damaged tissues, the platelets release growth factors and proteins that aid healing.
Platelets perform several healing roles. They actively:
Most importantly, they stimulate and accelerate your body’s natural healing mechanisms. By releasing growth factors, they attract reparative stem cells to the injury site and trigger collagen production, two critical components of effective tissue repair and regeneration.
In essence, PRP therapy amplifies your body's healing response, potentially leading to faster recovery times and improved function.
If you have a soft-tissue injury, give your body a healing boost with PRP. To find out if you’re a good candidate, call one of the four Coastal Ortho locations in El Segundo or Torrance, California, today.