If you suffer from hip osteoarthritis, you’re likely familiar with the stiffness and pain that comes with this condition as you go about your day. Since osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease, the pain and bone deformities often get worse as it progresses. For some people, this progression leads to a hip replacement. However, there is hope in platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy. Alongside a proper treatment plan, PRP therapy for hip osteoarthritis might help you slow its progression and avoid extensive surgeries or highly invasive treatments.
How Does Hip Osteoarthritis Progress?
At this point, you likely already know that hip osteoarthritis is a type of chronic arthritis that attacks your cartilage. Your cartilage is protective tissue that covers the ends of your bones and helps form certain structures in your body. Take your nose, for example—the septum is made from this tissue.
As that cartilage deteriorates in your joints, your bones no longer have that soft, cushiony tissue to absorb the stress of movement and promote flexibility. You might not be able to move your joints as easily as you once could. Often, the sound of grating, popping, or cracking can accompany your movements.
As the condition progresses, you may notice hard bumps of extra bone near your joints (known as bone spurs). In late stages, your hip joints can fill with inflammatory fluids that cause swelling, stiffness, and further pain.
For those in the late stages, your doctor might recommend a hip replacement as your best option.
How Does PRP Therapy for Hip Osteoarthritis Help?
PRP therapy is a treatment that makes use of your own blood platelets. Platelets are wound healing cells that help clot your blood—they’re essential to proper healing.
At ICBR, we begin this treatment by drawing your blood and placing that sample inside a centrifuge. The centrifuge then helps separate your platelets from your blood, creating a platelet-rich solution. With the help of an ultrasound device, we then inject this treatment into the hip area. PRP therapy is used to enhance treatments, improve pain, and boost healing for a variety of conditions, such as sports injuries and joint pain.
It’s important to remember that PRP therapy is not a one-and-done treatment. Most studies done on PRP only include one-time injections, which is an ineffective course of action. Naturally, if you’ve had this degenerative disease for years, you cannot erase those effects in just one day.
In the long term, however, this treatment can provide wonderful results beside a good treatment plan. Unfortunately, due to how much osteoarthritis varies from person to person, you aren’t guaranteed results—but for many, it’s certainly worth a try.
Slow the Progression of Your Condition
PRP therapy for hip osteoarthritis works best if you stay active and attend physical therapy. We recommend up to six weeks of physical therapy before we evaluate your hip joints again for a second treatment. To ask our experts more about this therapy, call us for a free consultation at 1-800-826-5366.