A leading-edge field of study in medicine is looking toward your own body when it comes to healing. The regenerative systems inside all of us are just now coming into play as a tool of medicine. Dr. Robert E. Karsch of Premier Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia offers platelet-rich plasma and amniotic growth factor therapies to help you heal better and faster. Call or click today to find out more about practical regenerative medicine.
While the field of regenerative medicine isn’t new – bone marrow transplants are one example – improved understanding about how our bodies heal has led to new techniques that permit doctors to assist the way your body heals to speed recovery or, in some cases, repair tissue more completely than natural healing on its own.
Regenerative medicine has three general approaches to treatment. These include:
Much of the buzz around regenerative techniques focuses on stem cells. Think of stem cells as biological building blocks that have few qualities of their own, except for the ability to differentiate themselves. Differentiation is a process through which stem cells convert to another type of cell, as the body needs, to repair or regenerate.
Stem cells may be just the tip of the regenerative medicine iceberg. Other areas of interest include cells such as progenitor cells, found in umbilical cord blood, and bioengineered pluripotent stem cells, which offer other treatment avenues. Platelet-rich plasma and other growth factor therapies are already showing results in practice.
Platelet-rich plasma, or PRP, usually is a concentration of your own blood that’s centrifuged to concentrate platelets into a solution that can be injected into your body. If you’ve heard of the “vampire” facial, then you’ve heard of PRP therapy for cosmetic use.
Platelets contain growth factor hormones and PRP contains as much as 10 times the concentration. When injected into an area of injury, these growth factors are thought to speed healing. Though the precise way PRP works isn’t known, clinical results show faster healing. Professional athletes use PRP therapy to reduce recovery times, for example.
Dr. Karsch offers both PRP and amniotic growth factor therapy to his patients.
