Platelet Rich Plasma

Our office is proud to provide our patients with “cutting edge” developing technologies that accelerate the healing process in the most natural way possible. It is a consistent goal throughout our practice to improve our surgical technique and predictably provide our patients with the very best results possible. We accomplish these goals through additional continuing education and taking advantage of the latest in what the rapidly advancing biotechnical industry has to offer.

The latest advancement involves understanding how our own body’s natural growth factors help to accelerate the healing process and is currently being applied in our gingival grafting procedures. The technique involves the use of very specific healing factors found in our blood stream and more specifically in our blood cells or platelets.

Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) is a volume of your own plasma that has a platelet concentrate above the body’s normal baseline.   Until now, the use of PRP has been confined to the hospital setting. This was due mainly to the cost of separating the platelets from the blood and the large amount of blood needed to produce a suitable quantity of platelets. Our office now possesses the technology to harvest, process, concentrate and deliver these growth factors directly to our operative sites. This technique represents the latest in bio-tissue engineering and cellular therapy and has been perfected over the past 10 years.

Why all the excitement about Platelet Rich Plasma?

PRP permits the body to take advantage of the normal healing pathways at a greatly accelerated rate. During the healing process, the body rushes many cells and cell-types to the surgical site in order to initiate the healing process. One of those cell types is platelets. Platelets are carriers of proteins specifically involved in regeneration of injured tissues; these proteins are termed Growth Factors. Platelets perform many functions, including formation of a blood clot and ultimately the release of growth factors (GF) into the wound. The more growth factors sequestered and released into the wound, the more stem cells stimulated to produce new host tissue. Thus, it has been demonstrated that PRP permits the body to heal more rapidly and more efficiently.

Platelet Rich Plasma has many advantages:

• Safety: PRP is a by-product of our patient’s own blood; therefore, disease transmission is not an issue.
• Convenience: PRP is processed in our office, under strict sterile conditions, simultaneously while the patient is undergoing an outpatient surgical procedure, such as gingival grafting.  
• Faster healing
• Cost effectiveness: Since PRP harvesting is performed with only a small portion of blood in the doctor’s office, the patient need not incur the expense of the harvesting procedure in the hospital or at the blood bank.

Frequently asked questions about PRP:

• Is PRP safe? Yes. During the outpatient surgical procedure a small amount of your own blood is drawn out via the IV. This blood is then placed in a specially designed centrifuge machine) and processed under the strictest guidelines. In less than fifteen minutes, the Platelet Rich Plasma is formed and ready to use.
• How long has PRP been in use? As a hospital adjunctive procedure, application of PRP has been in use for about a decade by Oral Surgeons, Plastic Surgeons, Orthopedic Surgeons and Cardiovascular Surgeons.
• Are there any contraindications to PRP? Some patients with bleeding disorders do not qualify.