Injured? Heal yourself with your own blood

It's the cutting edge of sports medicine: A patient's own blood, condensed into a healing solution, is used to speed recovery and cure chronic ailments.

World champion figure skater Patrick Chan recently received the treatment, known as platelet-rich plasma therapy, to hasten the recovery of his injured calf. Pittsburgh Steelers stars Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu had it before winning the Super Bowl. And now a growing number of weekend warriors with injured tendons and ligaments are seeking out the procedure.

Experts in sports medicine say that if the treatment's promise is fulfilled, it could accelerate the healing of common injuries such as tennis elbow and tendinitis in athletes at all levels.

The process involves injecting a patient's specially prepared blood into an injured tendon, muscle or ligament. The injected material – a concentrated solution of platelets, which contain growth factors – triggers the body's ability to repair muscle, bone and other tissue.

For elite athletes, the greatest benefit may be quicker recovery times. But doctors say the relatively simple procedure is most promising for chronic ailments commonly suffered by recreational athletes, such as tendinitis of the elbow, knee or Achilles tendon.



“The patients I treat have failed other treatments – failed physical therapy, anti-inflammatory medication – and are up against surgery as their only option," says Allan Mishra, an assistant professor of orthopedics at Stanford University and one of the primary researchers in the field.

Platelet-rich plasma has been used in some types of plastic surgery since the early 1990s, but its use in sports medicine has spiked in recent years, partly because of the treatment of some high-profile elite and professional athletes.

Tony Galea, a sports physician in Toronto, began offering the treatment eight years ago, when its application in sports medicine was in its infancy. Among his patients are Tiger Woods, NFL stars and Mr. Chan, Dr. Galea says. But about 40 per cent of his patients are people just staying active by swimming, jogging or playing recreational sports.

“They're in quite good shape for their age," Dr. Galea said in an interview, “but they do a lot of things and they get hurt doing them."

The procedure is not covered by provincial health insurance, so his patients pay $500 for each injection. Depending on the injury, they may need more than one.

Last week, a presentation by Dr. Galea hosted by the University of Toronto drew dozens of sports doctors, physiotherapists and medical students interested in the procedure.

(News had broken a day earlier that Dr. Galea's offices had been raided by the RCMP. He has since been charged with illegally importing and selling drugs. Dr. Galea's lawyer said the charges are based on false information about the homeopathic remedies in question, which are not related to platelet-rich plasma).

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