“Spinning Blood Isn’t Just for Athletes”

So reads the title of a Wall Street Journal column authored by Melinda Beck, tucked under the Health Journal section. In said article, Beck unpacks platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy for the conservative management of orthopaedic pathologies. And she unpacks well. The reader is encouraged to follow this thread to learn more.

Beck appropriately takes broad ink strokes, here, to adequately cover a topic of this complexity and breadth. In consequence, however, several appended details must yet receive further consideration. Namely, the efficacy of PRP, although still young in research, but nevertheless intimating promise, may target tissue out of its native context. Without discretion, PRP therapy tends to exalt tissue healing as an end in and of itself. Now, while in part this is important and necessary, and at times independently so, the environment, the context, in which the tissue first met pathology must be canvassed. It must be determined how and when the tissue behaved, and what upon, so that following successful PRP therapy the healthy tissue is not simply returned to an unhealthy, unmodified environment.