What are the prolotherapy success rates?

I tell my patients that if they go through prolotherapy, there’s an 80 to 85% chance that they’ll get at least a 50% reduction in pain – and some people get complete pain relief.

What are some examples of injuries athletes have endured that are treated with prolotherapy?

I had a professional hockey player who had a groin injury and couldn’t play hockey for six months. Today he is fine and skating for a professional hockey team. We have tennis players with tennis elbow – chronic elbow pain which is successfully treated with prolotherapy. People with partial rotator cuff tears, football players, other athletes, they’re all been successfully treated with prolotherapy. I’ve had a strong man who had plantar fasciitis who was successfully treated with prolotherapy.

There are many different ligaments in your body that have aches and pains. One of the most common ones is a sacroiliac instability. People think that they have a disc problem, but it’s not. They have pain on the sides of the back, difficulty getting up in the morning. I treat them with prolotherapy. Pain is reduced and sometimes completely resolved.

When is prolotherapy not the best treatment?

Some people are not cured with prolotherapy – these usually are people that are smokers, have autoimmune disease or are not in general good health. But if you’re healthy and live a healthy lifestyle, prolotherapy is very successful.

I have to ask, do the injections hurt and how many are required?

Yes I’m sorry to say that injections do hurt, but only for short period of time. I use a solution of 50% dextrose with some lidocaine, so approximately 3 to 4 minutes after the injection the pain goes away. A couple of hours later when this wears off, you will have increased pain and it may last for a day or two, but then that will subside.

Depending on the patient, usually I give one injection each week for 3 to 5 weeks. Then I wait 6 to 8 weeks to see if we’ve caused the tissue to repair – and the pain should go away, if not completely, at least by 80 or 90%.

Treatment depends on the area that I have to inject. If you have a large area site, say like in the sacroiliac area, I may have to do three or four injections that day to cover the whole area. But usually injections are spread out one each week for 3 to 5 weeks. If you miss a week because you happen to be out of town, it’s not a problem. As long as we keep the inflammatory reaction going, eventually the tissue is going to heal and your pain will go away.