[quote]ryansc wrote:
Dexamathasone is a very strong antiinflamatory medicine, much stronger than cortisone. Usually, cortisone is injected, but it’s been shown that injections of steroids directly into tendons can weaken the tendon and lead to rupture. The way iontophoresis works is using a negative charge to repel the negatively charged medication directly into the tendon over a period of 10-20 minutes.
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I’ve been having this done in dealing with my left elbow issues over the last month or so, and it definitely has made a huge difference. Of course this was administered along with muscle stim, and after a few ART modalities to the surrounding musculature, but I’m definitely coming out of the woods, and I attribute a lot of it the the iontophoresis. I had never heard of the procedure before, but apparently it’s more common in dealing with athletes (my brother treats a lot of the Islanders and the Mets).
I’ve had prolotherapy done for my sternoclavicular joint. Worked wonders.
Let me tell you what I mean by wonders: the joint was very lax, there was always a grinding, catching sensation and sound when protracting/retracating my shoulder blades. So, there was definitely some cartilage and/or ligament damage. Apart from that, my shoulder was instable and the SC joint hurt.
4 glucose (aq) injections (one per week) and three months later, the joint was almost its old self. Prior to that, I had waited almost 11 months for it to mend on its own. It didn’t. The cool part was that I didn’t have to stop training, either.
Unfortunately, I tore it again (heavy deads, bad form).
I guess the success of prolotherapy is strongly dependent on the practicioner knowing his stuff.
I wore down the cartilage in my knee wrestling in college. Couldn’t even drive for a few minutes without it locking up. Lifting and conditioning were out of the question. I got what are called Platelet Rich Plasma Injections (PRP). There was no growth hormone, just my own blood platelets. Worked wonders for me. I can squat heavy no pain, run sprints, do pretty much whatever I feel like.
For those that think the orthopedic surgery (getting your knee scoped) works, actually I believe it was the New England Journal of Medicine that did a study on it and found it to be no more affective than performing “dummy” surgery. For me it was the only thing that would help. I would highly recommend researching your doctor you get to do it though, as not all doctors are trained in it and some will try it without proper training.
I just went to the ortho for a major sports team, with intentions of getting PRP for knee tendonitis. He didn’t even mention it to me. I asked him about it and he said it didn’t help the 4 guys on the team who had it last year, and there’s no evidence it really works in general. There’s a beneficial accupunctural effect regardless of the injection.
I’ve recently done a platelet rich plasma injection into my elbow. I had a bad case of calcification on my tricep tendon.
I’ll be going back for another injection in a week, so far it seems to be working - although I’ve been avoiding exercises that may irritate the tendon, there is a general ‘limberness’ that was otherwise missing since I discovered the problem in February.
It seems that most people here are using wierd kinds of prolotherapy with just random stuff being injected, I’m hoping the fact I’m using my superhealing wolverine plasma will make a difference.
The doctor doing it for me is an ex national level rugby player and is still involved with rugby now as a doctor. He knows his shit, and tells me it has worked for his previous patients, although this is the first time hes doing it on an elbow (he’s done it successfully on knees, and achilles).
I’m a medical student from Holland and I have recently heared about prolotherapy.
I am personally very enthousiastic about it, there is nobody in Holland who practices it yet, so I havent seen it with my own eyes yet.
I’ve bought a book on Amazon from Dr. Ron Hauser about it called Prolo you Pain away
I’ll link to one of his sites http://www.prolonews.com/
I will get back to this topic when I get his book and when I’ve read some more about it.
There are not many studies published on Pubmed but most of them show positive results