This really
isn't a big deal but with all the talk about Derrick Rose's most recent
knee injury and with the mystery surrounding Kobe Bryant's medical trips
to Germany I thought it was interesting to see that Jared Dudley had
platelet-rich-plasma injected into his sore knee. (As a disclaimer, I'm
not a doctor, not an orthopedist, everything I know is from stuff
readily available on the web.)
The source is Brad Turner at the LA Times.
Platelet rich plasma therapy is pretty simple. The orthopedist removes
some blood from the subject, puts it in a centrifuge and separates the
platelet-rich material from the rest of the blood and injects those into
and around the suffering portions of the body (in this case, the knee).
Platelets are produced by the bone marrow are full of oxygen and are
critical to the healing process... or so modern medicine believes. The
treatment seems to work, although how much, how well, or how quickly is
debatable.
If you're thinking this is
similar to Kobe Bryant's German knee treatments you'd be correct
although there's a little more voodoo in the German "Regenokine"
treatment in that the blood is heated before it's centrifuged. Why? The
German doctors who invented it say it's to give the blood a "fever". Why
that works or doesn't work is the voodoo part. (Kobe Bryant says it
works, so does Alex Rodriguez. You can take it from there.) But the
heating part is also why the treatment isn't approved in the US.
There are other similar
"biologic" treatments using stem cells though these are considered both
more cutting edge and are also not USDA approved.
Finally, I thought it was
interesting that Mike Smith did a decent if not perfect job explaining
Derrick Rose's most recent injury. Rose tore the mediall meniscus in his
right knee (not the knee in which he suffered an ACL injury, the other
one). There are two menisci in each knee, lateral and medial. And yes,
they are shock absorbers between the big bones of the upper and lower
legs. And you can tear them and an orthopedist will go in and figure out
whether or not to remove the meniscus or sew it back together. In
Rose's case they opted to repair the meniscus and re-attach it, which
requires a longer rehab than simply removing the meniscus. But then Mike
Smith made a curious statement and omission. He stated that meniscus
removal was what Brandon Roy had done and it created a "bone on bone"
situation and hastened the demise of Roy's career. That's both correct
and incorrect. Brandon Roy had something like six knee surgeries from
high school through his pro career. Some of them were done well and some
of them weren't. He had ALL the meniscus cartilage removed from his
knees over those six or eight years (only he and his doctors know for
sure). All those procedures hastened an advanced arthritis condition on
his knees. The meniscus doesn't regrow but it's a mistake to say that
the condition is "bone on bone". That's too simple. There's a lot of
other material, muscle, ligaments, other cartilage that can hold the
bones apart without the meniscus. In Roy's case, the knees were too
deteriorated, too chronic to save.
But Smith curiously left out a
pair of Clippers players who've had all or pieces of meniscus removed
from their knees. Two summers ago Blake Griffin had a partial (at least I
think it was partial) meniscectomy on one of his knees. In 2010 Chris
Paul had ALL of the medial meniscus removed from his right knee. Both
Griffin and Paul were out weeks (Griffin's surgery was in the
off-season) not months. Was either surgery somehow inferior to the
surgery Derrick Rose suffered? Was removal of Paul's meniscus an
inferior treatment to Rose's? No, on all counts. All the surgeries were
performed by leading orthopedists. Decisions were made during the
surgeries and the results are the results. Chris Paul wore a knee brace
for a while and while he might be a little slower and less athletic than
when he came in the league it might be because he's eight years older
as much as because of his knee injury. And Blake Griffin still regularly
gets his head above the rim.
Will Derrick Rose, Blake
Griffin, Jared Dudley, and Chris Paul suffer later in life because of
these knee surgeries? Probably. The pounding pro basketball players big
joints take put them all at risk of arthritis, tendinitis, etc. later in
life. But how many people do you know who don't suffer some joint
deterioration? How many people eventually wind up with an artificial hip
or knee? A really really lot. It's going to happen to those guys too...
despite the fact that they're superior athletes, not because of it.
I didn't mean it to, but this has become a sort of follow up to this old article. There's more, better information in there if you're interested.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια :
Δημοσίευση σχολίου