Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP)

Platelet Rich Plasma, or PRP, is a treatment within the framework of regenerative medicine that has had a great boost in recent years.
Our blood contains red blood cells that are responsible for transporting oxygen from our lungs to all tissues of the body. As well as platelets, which are responsible for participating in coagulation and healing of lesions. Within these platelets and to a lesser extent in the serum, we find proteins called growth factors that participate in a signaling cascade that activates when there is an injury.

Our body has the ability to heal and/or regenerate after an injury (traumatic or disease). In this way we have scars on our skin, we can cure an ulcer in the cornea, consolidate a fracture or cure the endothelium, the inner layer, of our blood vessels. This ability to regenerate can be slowed down due to aging or injury or disease and this ends up causing degenerative processes and osteoarthritis. Treatment with PRP allows us to stimulate or accelerate this regenerative capacity of tissues.

Since the advent of PRP-based therapies, numerous studies have been conducted that discuss its effect. These studies have been conducted at the tissue level, with experiments on tissues such as skin, bone, cartilage, cornea or ligaments.

The main element that we must take into account is the way plasma is obtained since the different processes of obtaining provide different types of plasma and therefore with different capacities, and their effectiveness can vary.

The use of biological therapies should always be based on scientific evidence that does not follow currents that may be fashionable and that can also affect the scientific health world.

That is why studies of this type of biological therapies must be based on studies on tissues and animals before they can be applied in humans.

Dr. Cugat and the group of multidisciplinary researchers at the García Cugat Foundation have enhanced different studies on tissues such as cartilage, tendons, ligaments, joints such as knee, ankle, hip, shoulder or skin. These studies, in addition to being the origin of various doctoral theses, have been published in journals of high scientific impact. As a result of many of these studies, Dr. Cugat and the group of researchers have been able to develop human clinical studies where we can evaluate the potency of the effectiveness of knee platelet-rich plasma and in areas as important as cartilage lesions that lead to osteoarthritis or reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament of the knee , so well known to be affected by athletes of high international level.

These treatments follow a scrupulous system of obtaining that allows not only to ensure infertility, when handling in sterile areas of the Hospital Quirónsalud Barcelona, but allows to check the traceability from the extraction of the patient to its application both on an outpatient basis and in the operating room in the course of an arthroscopy or open surgery.

Various surgeries have been improved with the use of PRP because it has been shown not only to promote less inflammation of tissues, but a faster recovery of tissues where this therapy is applied. The lower rate of pain, the faster regeneration allows to accelerate many of the recovery processes in these patients, not only in athletes who for obvious reasons require it but in the general population that benefits from comfort and reduced use of medicines.