Internal Medicine
Prolotherapy
What is prolotherapy?
Prolotherapy is a form of regenerative medicine. It stimulates the body’s healing processes to strengthen and repair injured tissues that are causing pain.
It is a great option for treatment of arthritis, chronic back pain and chronic neck pain. Often times surgery can be delayed or avoided with prolotherapy.
Conditions we treat:
1. Chronic back pain due to facet joint arthritis, sacroiliac dysfunction
2. Knee pain due to meniscus injuries, arthritis, knee cap instability
3. Shoulder pain due to rotator cuff tears, labrum tears, arthritis
How does it work?
Prolotherapy works by stimulating the body’s natural healing mechanisms to lay down new tissue in the weakened area. This is done by a very directed injection to the injury site, “tricking” the body to repair again. The mild inflammatory response which is created by the injection encourages growth of new, normal ligament or tendon fibers, resulting in a tightening of the weakened structure. Additional treatments repeat this process, allowing a gradual buildup of tissue to restore the original strength to the area.
What is the cost?
Dextrose Prolotherapy:
One joint (knee, shoulder)............ $100
Neck ............................................ $300
Low back ..................................... $300
PRP (platelet rich plasma):
One joint (knee, shoulder)............ $500
Neck ............................................ $600
Low back ..................................... $600
Why so expensive?
Our goal is to provide this service to our patients at a reasonable price. The supplies required for extracting PRP from the blood is quite expensive, which is why PRP is so much more than dextrose prolotherapy.
Treatment of the neck and back can require over 30 injections per treatment. For this reason, there is a higher cost compared with the injection of a joint.
The supplies required to extract the PRP from your blood is the biggest cost.
Source: prolotherapycollege.org