Regenerative Injection Therapy
Recently, with the increased awareness of human regenerative injection therapies (RIT), aka proliferative therapy or “prolotherapy” including platelet rich plasma (PRP) therapy, and umbilical or placental derived stem cell therapy, there has been a surge of interest in the use of these therapies in treating pets for various debilitating conditions.
Numerous commonly occurring musculoskeletal pathologies seen in pets, may be successfully treated using these regenerative modalities.
This may obviate the need for surgical intervention.
Additionally we observe the more fundamental benefits of pain reduction and improved quality of life.
In veterinary medicine, pets are all too often euthanatized as a direct sequela of challenges regarding pain management and joint related morbidity.
However, pet prolotherapy does present challenges not usually encountered in human medicine.
For instance, restraint is required, as is thorough shaving, cleaning, and prepping of injection sites. Further, all use of anti-inflammatory drugs is discontinued a week prior to treatment, or more, depending on the half-life of the particular medicine. Post procedure, this restriction is continued and pain management is achieved using narcotic analgesics or other non anti-inflammatory class analgesics.
It is noteworthy that while this may appear unethical, the inflammatory cascade is crucial in repair of damaged tissue and regeneration of target tissues be they tendon, ligament, muscle, bone, or cartilage.
Consequently, anti-inflammatory medications inhibit the regenerative response, thereby decreasing the effectiveness of the procedure.
Due, in part, to the inflammatory ability of the solutions used in RIT, they are considered irritants. RIT is therefore a generally painful process albeit temporarily. This necessitates the use of sedation or a light plane of anesthesia in order to achieve the needed level of restraint to conduct the procedure. The author prefers short acting, reversible sedation to minimize risks.
This modality of therapies clearly has a valuable role in veterinary medicine. Not only do they lessen the need for more invasive surgical interventions, they also reliably enhance the quality of life and therefore longevity of the animals treated.
May this information encourage other pet people to seek these relatively simple yet highly beneficial modalities, in order to give their pets happier and healthier lives.