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Prolotherapy
The Center for Integrative Medicine is conducting a research study to evaluate the benefits of prolotherapy for tennis elbow.
Prolotherapy is a technique for treating chronic pain around joints and ligaments. It involves injecting small amounts of a sugar solution into those areas. These injections stimulate the body to repair the painful area.
What
is prolotherapy?
What
is the background of prolotherapy?
What
are the indications for prolotherapy?
What
are the contraindications to prolotherapy?
More
information on prolotherapy from the American Association of Orthopaedic
Medicine
What is prolotherapy?
Prolotherapy
is a technique for treating chronic pain around joints and ligaments.
It involves injecting small amounts of an irritant, such as a concentrated
glucose or sugar solution, into those areas. This causes localized inflammation
in the painful structures. As the inflammation resolves, healing occurs
which can result in improved stability and decreased pain. These improvements
can be maintained long-term after a series of injections.
What is the
background of prolotherapy?
- After a musculoskeletal
injury, there is often a strain or stretch of ligaments. Usually, healing
occurs restoring ligaments to their normal strength. However, if this
healing does not occur, the result is lax ligaments. This can cause
instability, muscle spasm, and a tendency to incur reinjury. Common
approaches to treatment including nonsteroidal medications or steroid
injections can result in delayed healing.
- Prolotherapy has
been used to treat chronic musculoskeletal pain conditions for well
over 50 years. It was developed and refined by several physicians in
the Midwest. These doctors found that injecting an irritant into tendons
and ligaments resulted in healing and long-term improvement. Research
has shown changes in collagen—one of the building blocks for connective
tissue—with prolotherapy injections and clinical studies have
found benefit of the injections for specific chronic pain conditions.
What are the
indications for prolotherapy?
The Center is involved
in ongoing research into the benefits of prolotherapy for many types of
musculoskeletal pain conditions including:
What are the
contraindications to prolotherapy?
Patients who have allergies
to the medications to be injected, bleeding or a coagulation disorder,
and anticoagulation (for instance patients taking coumadin).
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