I have the good fortune of being an experiment for my trauma orthopedic surgeon.
I tore several tendons in my right elbow several years ago, did the standard: PT then 2 cortisone injections then a very long and difficult surgery reattaching several tendon and rebuilding part of the annulus of the radius...long story short, it was FUBAR'ed, acute on chronic injuries. The post op recovery kept me out of surgery for 2 months, rehab sucked and now it works fine but if re-injured, we've burned the bridges and would need cadaver parts to rebuild it.
So recently the left elbow has the same thing....lucky me. My new ortho out here in PHX, shows me a European Journal article about a non-FDA approved treatment with a 90% success rate of avoiding operative repair at 1 year!! The US literature has about a 40% success rate for avoiding surgery, so I was interested to say the least. The process is to take 30mL of your blood, spin it down to separate the components, take the platelet rich plasma off and inject that (about 4 mL) into the injured area.....OH MY GOODNESS PAIN (10:10) despite lidocaine before the injection....a blow torch sensation was about right....2 days of torture then it settles down to a 5:10 pain which is baseline for me recently. Can't take antiinflammatories because the
injection is meant to inflame and heal the injuries....Platelet derived growth factors and ? stem cells?? like reaction in the joint. The nice thing is that it should be FDA approved by summer and available for all joint areas....very expensive but high probability of avoiding surgery = a deal for me.
So wear the brace and limit motion for a month...no stressing the joint, but can use the arm, just no lifting, etc and the injected joint is still swollen and limited with range of motion. By 3 months you generally know if it worked.
Hopefully, if it does work, it will be available to fix severely injured joints/tendon lacerations, detachments/bursitis, chronic inflammation,etc.
Will post updates as they occur. I love being an experiment!!
ss