so you're feeling much better after getting a platelet-rich plasma injection to treat arthritis
and whether it's for your knee your hip your shoulder or your ankle you're happy you can start
being more physically active without being in pain but you've also heard you may need additional prp
treatments in the future to make sure the pain doesn't come back so are these prp booster shots
really necessary and when is the best time to get them let's look at what the data shows
hey everyone dr jeff peng here now if this is the first time you are watching one of my videos my
goal is to help each and every one of you live a healthy and active lifestyle so if that's
something you're interested in please consider subscribing to my channel prp injections are an
exciting new treatment option for orthopedic conditions we use it to treat problematic
conditions involving the bones muscles tendons ligaments and joints and clinical trials continue
to show that they are an extremely effective way of treating pain and reducing symptoms especially
when it comes to arthritis but it's important to remember that no injection lasts forever
eventually the effects of prp will wear off so the answer to our prp booster shots necessary
for arthritis is yes think about it this way if you have high blood pressure your doctor
will recommend a medication for you to take every day to control your numbers and while you are on
these medications your blood pressure is very well controlled but if you ever stop taking them your
blood pressure will start to go up again and then you will be at risk for cardiovascular disease
such as strokes and heart attacks so we need to think about chronic orthopedic conditions such as
arthritis in the same way we need to regularly dose or administer prp to help manage the
underlying arthritis long term and so by doing so we can try to keep the internal environment of the
knee as healthy as possible this will prevent the buildup of inflammatory markers inside the joints
and prevent severe pain and symptoms so then the next question is when is the ideal time
to administer a prp booster shot we want to make sure we choose a time before the knee
starts to feel bad again ideally right before the effects of the first treatment starts to wear off
so now let's look at the data how long can we expect prp to provide pain relief when it
comes to knee arthritis most studies suggest that people will get up to one year of pain relief this
is specifically for those with mild to moderate arthritis those who have severe arthritis also
seem to get pain relief but the effects may not last as long as one year this study was
a systematic review that looked at 79 different studies with over 8 700 patients they wanted to
know among the various types of injections we use to treat knee arthritis which one provides the
longest and most sustained pain relief and they found that prp demonstrated the most prolonged
pain relief relative to the other injection types with the lowest pain score of all groups
measured at final follow-up prp also showed the lowest womac scores at final follow-up one-year
post-injection and just to be clear womac scores measure pain stiffness and function with lower
numbers being better so the prp group had the lowest scores at the one year follow-up now let's
look at hip arthritis this study was a systematic review and meta-analysis looking at injection
treatments for hip arthritis they found that prp is reported to have the highest rank for pain
relief for up to six months now it's important to point out here that there were not enough studies
in fact there was only one that provided long-term data on outcomes for prp injections for hip
arthritis so all we can say at this time is that prp can provide symptom relief for at least six
months so what can we conclude from these studies people with knee arthritis can expect one year
of pain relief while those with hip arthritis can expect six months and until more studies are done
we currently don't have enough data to know what happens after these time periods so what i tell
all of my patients is that they shouldn't wait until symptoms return before seeking treatment
by then it might be too late and they might need more intensive treatment to control their symptoms
again before getting back on maintenance therapy and that's why most doctors including myself
currently recommend a prp booster shot at around one year for knee arthritis in between six months
and one year for hip arthritis it's better to be proactive with treatment rather than reactive this
is called maintenance therapy and the goal of maintenance therapy is to control arthritis and
not let it flare up to cause symptoms now i also want to point out that prp is only one modality we
use to treat arthritis it's extremely important to take a multimodal approach when it comes to
arthritis so if you have knee arthritis or you have hip arthritis you want to check out these
videos next because i talk about all the treatment options that i recommend most thanks for watching