Orthobiologics over Steroid Injections

A single injection can be effective, right? We know that PRP and head to head studies with steroids lasts a lot longer, it starts working a lot faster. It's better for your joint, it makes the joint healthier as opposed to a steroid injection. Steroids. When we inject steroids into your joint, steroid is a crystal in suspension, right? It's in a fluid. And so that steroid, even though you can't see the crystal, we inject that into that tissue and those crystals will actually damage the tissue. It damages cartilage, it damages tendons that we put it into. And then over time, those steroid injections can actually worsen your arthritis, worsen your tendon injuries, increase your risk of things like rotator cuff tears if you have too many injections. And so the idea behind biologics is we're using your tissues, which you can't really reject, right? It's a very low risk material rather than a foreign material. We're using something that comes from you and it makes the tissues healthier rather than damage them. Now there's a question as to whether, can we regrow cartilage? If I inject it into a very arthritic knee, can we recoat cartilage? I think the studies there are sort of lacking. There are some very promising studies that show that it may slow down arthritic progression for a period of like two to four years. There's some indication there they also release these materials that are very potent anti inflammatories. When you have arthritis, the lining of the joint actually releases a material, a chemical that damages your cartilage. And some of our biologics treatments can stop that chemical from being released.