Ricky Carioti/WASHINGTON POST - Redskins tight end Chris Cooley, center, is shown stretching during training camp. Of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, he says: “It’s a neat treatment. I can’t tell you the ultimate benefits to it. No one can. It’s still new. But I did feel better.”
When his trainer advised him to try a popular but unproven healing therapy for his injured Achilles’ tendon last year, Washington Redskins safety LaRon Landry did not hesitate. He wanted to get back to work.
It did not concern him that the recommended treatment, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, lacks scientific validation, has shown mixed results in a limited number of studies and involves drawing a dose of one’s own blood and reinjecting it.
Landry now evangelizes like a PRP prophet. Since using the treatment for three different injuries, he’s been spreading the word to teammates.
“I’m happy I went with it,” Landry said. “A lot of guys ask me about it, and when guys get hurt, I try to put them onto the PRP because I think it’s something they should be knowledgeable of if they’re trying to recover.”
Landry’s attitude is shared by increasing numbers of injured athletes in locker rooms and clubhouses nationwide, who are grasping at non-surgical options for fast healing. For men whose livelihoods depend on staying healthy, the occasional, and widely publicized, PRP success stories have caused the popularity of the procedure to far outpace the research behind it, experts say.
Published studies on the procedure are limited. One of the earliest, co-authored by Allan K. Mishra, a Menlo Park, Calif., orthopedist, suggests that PRP is effective at treating tennis elbow, but a later one concluded that it did not markedly help rotator cuff injuries.
The available research does not provide complete clarity, according to doctors, because no two PRP procedures are exactly the same. Doctors say they are not only uncertain about when to administer it, but precisely how to do it for optimal effect.
“There’s tremendous variation among different types of PRP,” said Scott Rodeo, who participated in the rotator cuff study and will be the team physician for the U.S. swimming Olympic team at the 2012 Summer Games in London. “My PRP is different than your PRP, because my blood is different than yours. All of those things add up to such variability it’s hard to analyze the data to get a handle on it.”
‘The pioneering beginning’
Athletes, however, seem to care little about such details. In the last few months alone, a host of players have tried PRP, including major league pitchers Jose Contreras of the Philadelphia Phillies, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Bobby Jenks of the Boston Red Sox, Brett Anderson of the Oakland Athletics and Jesse Carlson of the Toronto Blue Jays, as well as Wesley Matthews of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers.
“The athletes are the ones at the pioneering beginning, trying new things to accelerate healing,” Mishra said. “Athletes are dissatisfied with other options presented to them.”
Landry believed PRP therapy helped his Achilles’ tendon so much he also used it when he injured his shoulder and hamstring. Teammates Chris Cooley and Brandon Banks recently sought out PRP injections for their injured knees.
Some athletes are turning to even more unproven and newfangled therapies involving the use of adult stem cells; Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning reportedly traveled to Europe for treatment on his neck that was not approved in the United States.
The Post Most: SportsMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Loading...
Comments