Regenerative Medicine – Garden State Medical Center

What are platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections?

PRP injections are an innovative regenerative medicine treatment that harnesses your body’s own natural healing ability to accelerate your recovery from injuries and conditions such as arthritis.

Your blood appears to be a liquid, but it also contains several solid cells including your platelets and red and white blood cells. Your platelets primarily support the clotting process, but they also carry hundreds of proteins known as growth factors around your body. These growth factors are essential to your natural healing process.

When your physician at the Center for Orthopedics and Sports Medicine provides PRP injections, they take a sample of your blood, then separate the plasma from the solids in a centrifuge. They recombine your platelets and plasma to create a serum that has a concentration of growth factors up to 10 times greater than a standard blood sample.

Your physician then injects that serum into your injured tissue, where it floods your body with the nutrients and growth factors necessary to repair tissue.

What is stem cell therapy?

Stem cells are the basic building blocks of your body. These cells are unique in that they can evolve into whatever type of cell your body needs at a given time. Stem cell therapy uses these cells to flood an injured body part with platelet-rich cells that can provide exactly what your body needs to repair the damaged tissue.

Stem cells are usually harvested from your own body, typically from your hip bone. In some cases, you may have cells from an adult donor.

Your doctor may recommend combining stem cell therapy with PRP injections to deliver an abundance of building-block cells as well as growth factors to facilitate cellular repair.

What injuries or conditions benefit from PRP injections and stem cell therapy?

Regenerative medicine procedures such as PRP injections and stem cell therapy are used for a variety of injuries and musculoskeletal conditions including: