Interview With Dr. Hauser Part II, “…we normally can tell the patient how many visits it’s going to be.”
Get the mp3 audio version here – Dr. Hauser Interview Part 2
Here’s Part II of the interview with Dr. Hauser, a medical pioneer who is raising awareness about a revolutionary treatment for curing soft tissue injuries and chronic pain called prolotherapy. You can find Part I here or you can checkout Part III.
[Dr. Hauser isn't just a doctor, he's also an athlete. Maybe that's one of the reasons he understands how hard it is to be sidelined by an injury and the importance of getting healed.]
Rafi: Is platelet rich plasma therapy just another type of prolotherapy, or is it something entirely new?
Dr. Hauser: Is platelet rich plasma a type of prolotherapy or is it new. It’s gaining in popularity but it’s just another type of prolotherapy so when a person receives prp or platelet rich plasma, its still that the solution specifically will stimulate the inflammatory reaction just like all the other solutions do with prolotherapy. What we’re finding is that certain conditions do appear to heal a little bit better with platelet rich plasma therapy such as significant labral tears or meniscal tears but normally the normal solutions we use are fine you don’t need to use platelet rich plasma.
Specifically, platelet rich plasma is the platelet rich part of the blood so what we’re doing in the office is drawing a persons blood and then we use a special filtering device to get the platelet rich part of the blood. That part of the blood has a lot of the growth factors. So platelet rich plasma involves the injection of a persons own growth factors into the area that’s degenerated or injured to get regeneration or healing. The other prolotherapy solutions that we use basically also increase a persons growth factors into the area but it’s more of an indirect method whereas platelet rich plasma is more direct.
Rafi: When do you use prolotherapy and when do you use platelet rich plasma therapy in your practice?
Dr. Hauser: How does a doctor decide which solution to use in the prolotherapy. When do you use the dextrose solution when do you u se sodium morrhuate which is an extract of cod liver oil, when do you use manganese , when do you use growth hormone, when do you use glucosamine, when do you use platelet rich plasma and honestly it depends upon the experience of the doctor. You know at Caring Medical I’ve basically been doing this full time since 1993 so we have a lot a lot of experience.
Besides not only knowing which solution to use we normally can tell the patient how many visits it’s going to be within a number of visits. Platelet rich plasma specifically is good for structures such as the labrum in the shoulder or the meniscus in knee. Those tissues seem to heal very very well with platelet rich plasma. In the office in Oak Park when someone has degenerative arthritis for instance in the ankle, the shoulder, the knee or the hip, we tend to use growth hormone and glucosamine.
For simple ligament and tendon injuries, tendon strains, ligament sprains, we’ll generally use hyper tonic dextrose. And when someone is a athlete or they’re very big and the structures have to be repaired very strongly or they have tendinosis (ed- such as Jumpers Knee or Tennis Elbow) or a degenerated tendon, those typically require stronger solutions such as the extract of cod liver oil which is sodium morrhuate.
Rafi: Thanks to Dr. Hauser for this great interview and stay tuned for Part III.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:37 am
[...] Note: You can also check out Part I and Part II. [...]