Once your pain and/or dysfunction is reduced by at least 50% (typically after 1 to 3 anti-inflammatory treatments), the “anti-inflammatory cocktail” is replaced with a slightly different “proliferative cocktail” which is more specifically geared towards the regenerative and remodeling phases of the healing process.† This cocktail is also followed by the oxygen-ozone mixture. In conditions with loss of cartilage, partial rotator cuff, tendon, ligament or meniscus tears, instability, significant degeneration, and/or certain other characteristics, Dr. Haas may recommend adding ozone-activated concentrated growth factor (CGF) which is essentially the next generation of platelet-rich-plasma (PRP) to these proliferative prolozone treatments.  In these cases, CGF-PRP is injected in addition to the “proliferative cocktail” and the ozone-oxygen mixture, so you get all the benefits of prolozone with the addition of the healing stimulus of the CGF-PRP.

 

Traditional PRP, which is a more mainstream (and often more expensive) treatment than prolozone at the time of this writing, starts with drawing blood from your vein into tubes as if you were getting labwork done.  The tubes are then spun in a centrifuge, and the doctor, nurse or technician carefully extracts the portion of the plasma that contains most of the platelets (called platelet-rich plasma or PRP) and activates it with calcium.  PRP is then injected into joints and tissues with some numbing medicine.  PRP seems to stimulate healing by releasing growth hormones via an excellent delivery system called "exosomes," which are taken up by nearby ligaments, cartilage and other damaged tissues, stimulating your own local stem cells to repair and regenerate.

 

Note on CGF: Dr. Haas continuously seeks and delivers the best available treatments, thus in July 2019, we upgraded our technology to offer the next generation of PRP, called concentrated growth factor CGF, which contains more platelet-derived growth factor vessicles (exosomes) AND CD34+ stem cells.  This requires a highly specialized centrifuge that spins the blood using a specific, research-driven protocol!  We have heard of other doctors offering CGF injections without prolozone for $1600 a pop!!  Watch a short video about CGF-PRP here.

 

With traditional PRP or CGF, you don’t get all the nutrients, oxygen or ozone discussed above, and the PRP doesn’t spread out through the damaged tissues the way that it does with prolozone.  This means that in general, combining CGF-PRP with prolozone is less painful during and after the procedure, and leads to more dramatic and more lasting (usually permanent) benefits compared to PRP by itself.

 

Another advantage of prolozone with CGF-PRP is that instead of using calcium to activate the platelets, the doctor uses ozone.  Activating CGF-PRP with ozone kills any pathogens that are present in the blood (you might be surprised to learn that blood is not sterile!), and ozone has been shown in-vitro to be superior to calcium in terms of increasing exosomes, platelet-derived growth factor, transforming growth factor b1, as well as the signaling molecule interleukin-8 which attracts circulating white blood cells into the region to clean up old damaged tissue(1).

 

Everyone is different, and a general rule of thumb is that the longer the condition has been present, the more treatments it will require to resolve.  That said, most patients experience permanent pain relief and recovery of function after a series of 3-6 prolozone visits‡.