As part of my ongoing march towards decrepitude I’m now having bad shoulder pain. MRI showed it’s a partial thickness rotator cuff tear. No specific injury that I remember. My doctor puts it in the it can happen as you get older category. I’m trying to avoid surgery especially since it’s been less than a year since my last surgery. PT didn’t help. Cortizone shots didn’t help.
My ortho said he has seen PRP shots be affective for my kind of injury. That’s platelet-rich plasma injections for those that don’t know. Unfortunately insurance won’t cover it so it would be $800-$1000 out of pocket. I still have some weeks before my next appointment when it will be discussed. Anyone have any experience with it? How did it go?
As you may be aware, studies of PrP use in partial rotator cuff tears show mixed results as to pain reduction and functional recovery, likely due to variance in how the PrP is prepared, what treatment protocols are used and the nature of the study population.
So rather than just hearing anecdotes from random Dopers, it would be better to hear from this doctor’s other patients about how their treatments turned out.*
*obviously the doc won’t give you their names, but maybe if he/she contacted them they’d be willing to get in touch with you.
**limitations of anecdotral evidence are noted.
I had a Jones fracture in my left foot. That’s the outside bone, I guess it’s the extension bone of the pinky toe.
YMMV..the PRP injection hurt like hell. For days my foot was inflamed and sore. And angry!
It’s a hard to heal break. And the PRP was supposed to help reduce the time for recovery.
It’s been a while so I forget if was a shorter time.
Got PRP in my shoulder for arthritis and frozen shoulder. Made it significantly worse. Got it scoped later that year which gave some relief but had it replaced a year later. Definitely seems to have fallen out of favor after being the golden child 5-7 years ago.