Do PRP and stem cell injections work?

[Music] hi welcome to another episode of talking with DOX I'm dr. Brad winning and I'm dr. Paul's alsowe so for this video and we're just going to answer a question that was emailed to us regarding stem-cell therapy and PRP and by the way thank you for all the questions that you're sending or leaving his comments on the videos read your best to address them as fast and efficiently as we can yeah and keep in mind when you send a question we can't give you specific medical information about your specific case but if you email his questions or ideas that you think would make for good videos that's kind of what we're looking for so this question came in to that asked if we could talk about stem cell therapy and PRP injections okay what's PR people so PR P stands for platelet-rich plasma and the way it is obtained is simple a sample of some blood is taken it is spun down in a centrifuge and then the portion of the blood that is rich in platelets is extracted and re injected into a pathologic tissue or area like a knee or tendon or ligament so it could be a joint or soft tissue yeah so it could be targeting arthritis or some type of inflammatory process right okay the problem with it is it's very new so when you say PRP there is a bunch of different sort of recipes or concentrations or techniques to get the PRP so if you can't compare one type of PRP to another it's very difficult and certainly within the orthopedic literature evidence is growing in support of this type of treatment but it's not definitive any stroke originated yeah if there's not it's not conclusive yet but like you said it is growing evidence that this can and this does have some promise and some potential to treat things like arthritis or chronic rotator cuff tears or chronic mentis injuries any risk doing it before the evidence is conclusive Paul whenever we do an injection of any kind is always a the risk of infections you know that's the one risk that we have to watch out for I think it's hard to do damage any other way and then of course the risk to your pocketbook yes my nancial risk I think is very real there's varying price ranges and and it can't get expensive particularly with no guarantee of success and I think the other risk I guess for everyone involved is anytime you're handling blood products that carries an inherent risk - probably more the injector than the person receiving the injection right so this will not be our last a video on PRP we're going to keep you updated as the evidence comes along Stem Cell Stem Cell what's the deal with stem cells okay if PRP had a hetero jamee hydrogen ad in the way it's collected and applied stem cell is orders of magnitude more mixed up because they're things are called stem cell therapy yet they mean very different things so it's hard to compare apples to apples in this situation one person might be offering apples the other could be offering mangoes pineapples orange who knows tropical fruit yes all the fruits so what's a stem cell a stem cells basically a cell that has the potential to become many different types of tissue and usually they're getting it from a bone marrow source or potential from fat ride the most common places right and then when they do obtain these stem cells do they inject them right back into you or do they take them into the lab for a while and expand the population and then re-inject it these are all things you have to look at and and the costs on these sort of treatments vary markedly as well and probably exponentially compared to PRP as well so they're much much more expensive and I think the real hope for these are where people are really grasping is people with severe arthritis that that want to have a cure for their arthritis and and as great as that would or will be if it happens I think we're still far from that at this point yeah so is the evidence for stem cells the conclusive it works for sure I would say it's definitely inconclusive right yeah stem cell has been and their interest for my research I've worked with stem-cell research for quite a number of years I haven't used it clinically but certainly experimentally she part of a research group yeah where we did some stem cell extraction and then tried to expand the population I can tell you with those stem cells it took a team of scientists PhD students postdocs people way smarter than me poking prodding these stem cells and trying to convince them to turn into cartilage and the kind of cartilage that was produced was not as good as the cartilage that you have on your joint surfaces certainly arthritis very challenging problem and that's why people continue to try to try to solve it yeah so we definitely not our last video on stem cells we're gonna keep you updated as evidence does become available but right now should I try it at this point I'm probably not I haven't certainly is not part of my practice and I'm more in the wait-and-see mode right so if you're pushed and that you have it as a treatment option you know ultimately it's up to you yeah there's no evidence yet to say that it works really well but there's no evidence out there that says that it doesn't work so if you want to take your chances and give it a go and that's reasonable let us know how it goes up to now we'll try and keep you updated as the evidence becomes available in this field and if you have any further questions on different topics please feel free to email us at info at talking with Doc's calm and remember you are in charge of your own health if you found this video helpful please like it on YouTube or subscribe to our Channel and we'll see you next time thank you

Channel: Talking With Docs

Views: 176,790

Keywords: stem cell, prp, platelet rich plasma, knee injection

Id: WKEvbMgkg8w

Length: 6min 8sec (368 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 02 2018