Platelet Lysate

Many adults live with chronic pain, thinking that relief only lies in invasive treatments like surgery or spinal injections. This doesn’t have to be the case, especially if you live in New York. Stem cell therapy is a quickly evolving field that provides a more natural, less invasive treatment for conditions like pinched nerves, spinal disc pain, and other injuries. The use of platelet lysate and platelet rich plasma therapy could make stem cell therapy even more effective and safe.

The future is happening now in your NYC pain management doctor’s office. Platelet lysate has extraordinary potential for healing your body naturally. The therapy provides another alternative for treating pain and injury. With time, research, and clinical trials, this new treatment option could forever change how diseases are treated.

To provide a brief overview of the progress made in pain reduction, consider this: The cells that are used to regenerate and restore damaged tissue are called mesenchymal stem cells or MSCs. They’re found in your bone marrow, but in very low concentrations, compared to other cells. For these cells to provide a noticeable effect in areas where you’re injured or hurting, you need a much larger concentration.

Welcomed Changes

After these stem cells are extracted from your bone marrow, they’re often cultured outside your body using additives that help them multiply. In this stronger concentration, your NYC pain management specialist or experienced physician injects these cells into your body where you have diseased or damaged tissue.

But the additive used to help multiply these cells is foreign to humans. It’s effective enough and relatively safe — meaning an allergic reaction is the worst you can expect. But since it’s still a foreign substance, and isn’t as effective as human MSCs.

Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy to the Rescue

Enter platelet rich plasma therapy. This medical technology has been emerging as an alternative for cultured MSCs. Platelets are the cells in your blood that are necessary for clotting. When you cut yourself, the platelets in your blood clump together to form a clot and stop the bleeding.

Platelets are rich in growth factors, the proteins that promote growth and healing. So, combining the reconstructive properties of MSCs with the healing properties of platelets vastly increases the chances of successful repair and regeneration of your tissues. When this mixture is injected directly in an area that’s causing you pain, the cells combine to work wonders.

Getting to Platelet Lysate

Whether you’re getting MSCs or platelet therapy to help heal tissue damage, the crucial metric is the growth factors available. Until recently, whole platelets were used to bombard your damaged area. These platelet rich plasma (PRP) procedures provided some healing, but researchers found that by carefully breaking the platelets — or lysing them — they released the growth factors and provided an enhanced effect. Since then, platelet lysate therapy has replaced PRP in many cases.

This minimally invasive therapy has found some success, especially in treating bone damage and spinal conditions. Even though research is still ongoing, many patients have found that platelet lysate therapy does much more than just alleviate pain. Results show that their bodies actually heal — naturally — using cells from their bodies. And the healing happens much quicker.

The Effectiveness of Platelet Lysate Therapy

The procedure provides relief for many conditions, but its effectiveness varies. The therapy helps your body do what it does naturally, but since everyone heals at a different rate, the results reflect that. That means you may need just one treatment, while others may require more. It depends on factors such as:

• Age
• Area of damage
• Degree of damage
• Immune status
• Immune response
• Overall health
• Activity after treatment
• Other health factors or conditions that slow healing

The Ideal Candidate

One of the most advantageous features of platelet lysate therapy is that there are few restrictions on who can get this treatment. Unlike surgery or steroid treatments that require you to either be at a certain level of health or not have certain risk factors, platelet lysate therapy can work for many people.

The only criteria you have to meet for pain management specialist Dr. Leon Reyfman to treat you are:

• You suffer from chronic pain or a degenerative condition.
• You can get treatment in the Brooklyn NYC area.

Platelet Lysate Therapy Advantages

The numerous advantages of this innovative treatment outweigh the common problems associated with other therapies, such as surgery or steroid injections. The advantages of platelet lysate therapy include that it’s:

• Non-invasive
• Using your own healing power
• A natural regeneration of cells
• Associated with short recovery periods
• Less inflammatory
• Easy to prepare and perform
• Associated with long-term healing

In addition to these advantages, the whole procedure simply speeds up your natural healing process because the growth factors are available to the damaged tissue immediately. The platelet lysate can be injected directly into the sensitive area to help start the healing.

Also, unlike surgery — which you either have or don’t, and you’re stuck with the results — platelet lysate therapy can be applied as much or as little as your body needs. If you see improvement, you can slow or stop the treatments. If your body needs more support, you can keep getting the procedure.

The Therapy Procedure

The procedure for platelet lysate therapy is far less complicated than surgery and much less painful. After talking with a stem cell specialist in Brooklyn NYC about your condition, you both can decide if platelet lysate therapy is the right course for you. The next steps are relatively simple:

1. The lysed platelet mixture to be reinjected into your damaged tissue is taken from your own blood.
2. The small sample of blood is taken and centrifuged to separate the platelets from other blood components, creating platelet rich plasma (PRP).
3. The PRP is subject to a series of freeze/thaw cycles to carefully break apart the platelets, releasing the growth factors.
4. The resulting platelet lysate, combined with a minute amount of an anti-inflammatory, like dexamethasone, is then injected into the damaged area using a guided technique like ultrasound or fluoroscopy.

After this short procedure is complete, plan to rest and restrict activity for about 48 hours. In time, you’ll know whether the procedure has worked if you feel less pain and an increase in movement or activity. You’re able to increase or decrease the number of treatments depending on what your body tells you.