New Idea: Healing Injuries, Arthritis With Blood

Feb. 18, 2009— -- A handful of sports medicine specialists across the country have been quietly experimenting with a medication-free treatment aimed at healing injuries faster -- a concentrated solution of the patient's blood.

Pittsburgh Steelers' Super Bowl star Hines Ward has tried it, as have other football players and some surgery patients in a few major cities.

Now some doctors are getting direct requests for injections of blood plasma, although the treatments -- platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and autologous conditioned plasma (ACP) -- have yet to be rigorously studied in the United States. One was only approved by the Food and Drug Administration in December.

"It's appealing biologically," said Dr. Scott Rodeo, a team physician for the New York Giants and a professor of orthopedic surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City.

In the procedure, doctors draw blood, separate the healing platelet cells from the red blood cells and then inject the solution back into the patient's injury. Anyone who has had a swollen limb knows blood naturally flows to injury sites to help healing.

The blood plasma injections might isolate and concentrate those naturally healing properties with the idea to kick-start the body's healing process, or at least accelerate it.

Rodeo explained that the platelets may have a dual function in healing: one to build a sort of scaffolding on which new tissue would grow, and another to "turn on cells" chemically to start dividing and replacing the broken muscle, tendons and perhaps bone.

But, Rodeo insists, "we need to learn much more about the basic mechanism, how this really works."

"I got one [treatment] as soon as it came out and up to this point, I've been very pleased with what I've seen," said Dr. James P. Bradley, a doctor with the Pittsburgh Steelers and a clinical professor of orthopedics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Bradley started using the PRP treatment a year ago. For the last six months his office has been one in a handful of clinics or "beta sites" across the country to test the variation of the treatment called ACP.

"I must tell you, it's wonderful. There's a buzz about it. But you have to wait for the science," said Bradley, who treated Ward this season with ACP.