PRP - Platelet Rich Plasma

20180428 PRP pic (2).jpg

I started doing my own research on knee injuries to understand what was going on better, and due to the poor response times and lacking diagnosis Alberta Health Services, I had to start looking into other options for service.

For a previous problem my then running coach Glenroy Gilbert recommended at I travel from Ottawa to Toronto to sports medicine Dr Anthony Galea who was very helpful.
(who's clients have included golfer Tiger Woods, Olympic medalists Dara Torres, Mark McCoy medalist (hurdles), Donovan Bailey; NFL players Jamal Lewis, Javon Walker , Santana Moss; Chris Simms, and figure skater Patrick Chan).
Major League Baseball players Alex Rodriguez, Huston Street and John Patterson have also received treatment from Galea (correct me for any wrong handles).

Looked him up again and saw a few years after that, he introduced PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) therapy as a way to treat his patient injuries.

20180428 Dr Galea PRP TED talk.JPG

What I like about Dr. Galea is he does not let limitations of conventional medicine establishment prevent him from the practice of advancing medicine (see his TED talk).

20180428 PRP components pic.jpg

PRP therapy is the process of treating an injury with a patient's own blood, concentrating & reinjecting your natural growth factors with the intent of promoting soft tissue growth in ligaments & tendons.  It is legal and widely used now, often paired with stemcell injections.

For ACL repair PRP alone did not appear to be a solution; at best it may have be an accelerator in the right situation.

Stem cells have potential, yet do not ensure the physical tissue's position is achieved (may not resolve leg lock) and sometimes result in tumors and defects - stem cell technology for ACL is too early from what I see, and there was not strong research backing this for ACL repair either.

So I continue to do as much research as I can late evenings & weekends.

*in US this would be 4 weeks post op