Joint pain relief without surgery
Also known as nonsurgical ligament reconstruction,
prolotherapy is a conservative treatment for many painful musculoskeletal conditions. This includes degenerated or herniated discs, unresolved whiplash injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic tendonitis and sports injuries including partially torn tendons, ligaments and cartilage.
Prolotherapy is a simple incisionless technique that stimulates the body to repair the painful area when the natural healing process needs a little assistance. In most cases, commonly prescribed anti-inflammatory medications and more drastic measures like surgery and joint replacement may not help and may often hinder or even prevent the healing process.
How does prolotherapy promote natural healing?
Prolotherapy is short for “proliferation therapy.” Prolotherapy causes the growth, or proliferation, of new ligament tissue in areas where it has weakened.
Your ligaments are the structural bonds that hold bone to bone in your joints. Sometimes ligaments will not heal back to their original strength after an injury. The healing is incomplete since the ligament’s blood supply is limited. Because your ligaments have many nerve endings, this causes pain in the area of ligament damage.
Your tendons are the tissue that connects bones to muscle. Like ligaments, they too can become injured and cause chronic pain.
Prolotherapy works by exactly the same process that the human body naturally uses to stimulate its healing system, a process called inflammation. Prolotherapy uses a saline solution injected into the injured tendon or ligament where it attaches to the bone. This causes a localized inflammation in these weak areas. This increases the blood supply and thus the flow of nutrients that stimulate the tendon or ligament tissue. This in turn causes the proliferation of new ligament or tendon tissue exactly where the injections are given.
The procedure is very similar to spot welding. It strengthens the exact spot where the injection takes place and the more injections, the stronger the “weld.” In fact, the ligament and tendon tissue that forms as a result of prolotherapy is both thicker and stronger than normal tissue – up to 40 percent stronger in some cases.
How long does nonsurgical reconstruction take?
Treatment response depends on one’s healing ability and varies from patient to patient. The average number of treatments is four to six. Some individuals may require a dozen or more treatments, while others may need just a few.
Dr. George Drakes, our medical director, is the only doctor performing prolotherapy in the area. As a board-certified pain relief specialist, he is eminently qualified to evaluate your chronic-pain condition to see if you are an appropriate candidate for prolotherapy. After you start your treatment, Dr. Drakes can tell you how you are responding and give you and your referring doctor an accurate estimate of the total treatments you’ll need to complete nonsurgical reconstruction.