This preliminary non-controlled prospective study supported the safety, tolerability and efficacy of PRP injections for pain relief and improved function in a limited number of patients with OA of the hip.

Arthroscopic management of avascular necrosis of the femoral head is viable and has significant advantages. Clinical studies should justify the theoretical additional benefits of this approach.

This study, although uncontrolled, shows that PRGF technology is clinically safe and can enhance the healing of nonhypertrophic nonunions.

We describe a new technique of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) infiltration for the treatment of severe knee osteoarthritis. PRP intra-articular infiltration is a promising treatment for knee osteoarthritis, but it still has some limitations in high-degree osteoarthritis. Diagnosis of osteoarthritis is based on clinical and radiographic findings, and patients with grade III or IV knee tibiofemoral osteoarthritis based on the Ahlbäck scale are considered candidates for this technique. The technique consists of performing intraosseous infiltration of PRP into the subchondral bone, which acts on this tissue and consequently on cartilage-bone communication. Although the intraosseous injection hinders the conventional knee intra-articular infiltration, it allows an extension of the range of action of the PRP, which acts directly on the subchondral bone, which is involved in the progression of osteoarthritis. Thus this technique involves a new administration of PRP that can delay knee arthroplasty; moreover, it can be applied for not only severe osteoarthritis but also other pathologies in which the subchondral bone is critical in the etiology, such as necrosis and osteochondral lesions.

In the present study we evaluated the motor recovery process of peripheral nerve injury (PNI), based on electrophysiological and histomorphometric criteria, after treatment with plasma rich in growth factors (PRGF) injections and scaffolds in an ovine model. Three groups of sheep underwent a nerve crush lesion: the first group (n = 3) was left to recover spontaneously (SR); the second group was administered saline injections (SI; n = 5) and a third group (n = 6) received PRGF injections and scaffolds immediately after the crush injury. At post-intervention week 8, 70% of sheep in the PRGF group were CMAP-positive, with no electrophysiological response in the rest of the groups. Histomorphometric analysis 12 weeks after the surgical intervention revealed that the average axonal density of the SR (1184 ± 864 axons/µm ) and SI (3109 ± 2450 axons/µm ) groups was significantly inferior to the control (8427 ± 2433 axons/µm ) and also inferior to the PRGF group (5276 ± 4148 axons/µm ), showing no significant differences between the control and PRGF groups. The axonal size of the SR and SI groups was significantly smaller compared with the control group (18 ± 4 µm ), whereas the axonal size of the PRGF group (6 ± 5 µm ) did not show statistical differences from the control. Morphometry of the target muscles indicated that the PRGF group had the lowest percentage volume reduction 12 weeks after the crush injury. The PRGF group had larger muscle fibre areas than the SI and SR groups, although the differences did not reach statistical significance. Overall, these data suggest that the PRGF injections and scaffolds hastened functional axon recovery and dampened atrophy of the target muscles in an ovine model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.