The human body is an amazing thing: a feat of evolution so complex we barely understand it – an unbelievable tool for experiencing pleasure and joy, the fundamental biologic apparatus through which we know life, the world and each other.
But when the body is in pain, it becomes a physical prison in which we are hopelessly, miserably entrapped.
Steve Burch, 46, of Ignacio, has been in nearly constant pain for six years. He has a lot of back issues, but the big problem is he has ankylosing spondylitis, meaning his spinal cord is slowly fusing together.
“Some days, you’re OK, and some days, you just don’t know how you’re moving,” he said.
He’s tried everything – chiropractic interventions, massages, steroid injections. They worked – for about a day.
Then he turned to Animas Spine, on the Rivergate Medical Campus next to Animas Surgical Hospital, where Dr. Patrick McLaughlin administers blood-platelet therapy, a technique on the outer frontier of regenerative medicine.
Burch said after his first dose of blood-platelet therapy, he enjoyed “100 percent pain relief, for a little over a week.”
McLaughlin, who studied groundbreaking blood-platelet therapy techniques under Dr. David Karli, at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, said the therapy appears to be extremely versatile.
“Some people are using it as an adjunct in surgeries. Professional athletes are using it to treat injuries as well,” he said.
He said therapy takes advantage of a basic healing technology: blood.
“We used to believe that platelets were just plugs for bleeding. But what we’ve discovered is that they are actually full of growth factors that help the healing process. They’ll even clomp together and create a scaffolding for healing cells to come in and repair the tissue,” he said.
How it works
Blood-platelet therapy involves extracting blood from the body, spinning it in a centrifuge until the blood is so concentrated it’s mostly platelets and re-injecting the platelet-rich plasma into the body’s injured tissue, often a tendon or joint.
The idea is that by distilling “growth factors” in the blood, the platelet-enriched blood plasma spurs wounds to heal.
McLaughlin uses the therapy to treat all manner of bodily ills: arthritis in the knee and shoulder, rotator-cuff injuries, tendon strains throughout the body, tennis elbow, strained hamstrings, bursitis “in the hip and in general” and plantar fasciitis in the foot.
“Basically, we create an injury using a needle, then give you a whopping dose of your own growth factor to start the healing process,” he said.
The science behind the therapy developed in the 1980s; its roots are in facial surgery and veterinary medicine.
In lab experiments done on animals, the therapy has repeatedly produced convincing results. After surgically creating lesions on animals’ tendons and other tissues, scientists have found blood-platelet therapy encouraged the damaged tissues to mend more quickly, by generating new collagen and blood vessels.
Anecdotally, the therapy has yielded similarly terrific results for professional athletes.
Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, Kobe Bryant, Ray Lewis and Alex Rodriguez have used it to tackle sore knees, hurt hamstrings, ailing abdomens, tennis elbow – and to speed recovery after undergoing various surgeries.
Last year, the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons convened a panel to discuss blood-platelet therapy, which it described as “the hottest topic in orthopedics this year.”
Though the therapy is in vogue, it hasn’t yet breached the medical mainstream. Most insurance companies refuse to pay for it, classifying the treatment as experimental. (Across the country, blood-platelet therapy costs about $1,000 a pop, though it’s $900 at McLaughlin’s office.)
Perhaps the biggest obstacle is the Food and Drug Administration still hasn’t approved the treatment.
McLaughlin – who can sound like a proselytizer for platelet-rich plasma – said on this count, the FDA is behind the times: blood-platelet therapy already is accepted in Europe.
And increasingly, scientific research is confirming the regenerative benefits of this therapy. In May 2013, the American Journal of Sports Medicine found 88 percent of athletes who had been treated with blood-platelet therapy returned to play without further injury.
McLaughlin said he wants to see blood-platelet therapy effectively replace the standard medical practice of treating injuries with physical therapy and steroid injections.
“It’s good for musculoskeletal injuries, anything from joints to muscles, arthritic joints, muscle and tendon problems, ligaments, bone healing,” he said. “Sort of anywhere that you can put a steroid injection is probably amenable to platelet-rich plasma, except one actually has tissue degrading properties, and the other has healing properties.”
In the middle of a phone interview, he got a text from Brett Gosney, the chief executive officer of Animas Surgical Hospital:
“3 hour run today w zero pain. Pushed pretty hard too. Do you know how close i was to surgery? Seriously I’m your new poster child. Me and Kobe Bryant.”
Steve’s blood
Burch went back to McLaughlin for his second of three rounds of blood-platelet therapy Wednesday.
The therapy involved Burch sitting patiently as McLaughlin extracted a large vial’s worth of blood from Burch’s arm.
Then McLaughlin gingerly added a little anticoagulant and calcium chloride to Burch’s extracted blood and placed it into a centrifuge, where it spun for 15 minutes in two cycles.
Burch, ever the trooper, laid facedown on a doctor’s bed.
Once the blood was done spinning, McLaughlin squirted it back into Burch’s body, guiding the syringe into a tiny, exact spot near his lower spinal cord, within the sacroiliac joint, with the help of an ultrasound machine.
In all, the procedure took about 25 minutes. Burch said he felt “a little bit of pressure” – but it didn’t hurt.
McLaughlin said the therapy has tremendous promise for people whom traditional medicines have failed. The therapy itself is simple; he can do it in his office. And he said in many instances, it’s a great alternative to surgery, which can be rough on the body.
He said the genius of the blood platelet therapy is doctors are “using your own tissue, your own stuff. Unlike with steroids, nothing is artificial,” making it less likely the body will reject the treatment.
He said in his experience, blood-platelet therapy works for about 75 percent of patients “without side effects because it’s your blood,” he said.
And therein perhaps lies the treatment’s poetic, radical, almost irresistible attraction:
Burch, whose body is strong and handsome and battling against an excruciating disease, has within himself the power to heal himself: blood. His veins already course with a substance possessing a mysterious, exquisite and innate aptitude, restoring life and taking away pain.
Two days after the therapy, he said he was a little sore around the spot where he’d been injected.
“That usually lasts a couple of days,” he said. “But after that, the pain is gone.”
He’ll get his third treatment sometime in April.
“I just hope it works!” he said.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
