marti124
New member
It appears that the clinical evidence currently available doesn't support the use of prolotherapy.
http://www.aetna.com/cpb/medical/data/200_299/0207.html
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/prolo.html
David, I've read the Blue Cross and UHC statements on Prolotherapy and am well aware of them. In my posting, I provided this paragraph:
By the way, Dr. Hauser has a great critique on the established insurance companies and medical critics of Prolotherapy who use "placebo" studies to show that the statistical significance is slight (bottom line: Prolotherapy is so close to a placebo technique anyway so to say that both placebo and prolotherapy benefits patients 30-35 % in missing the significance that 65% of the patients got better! Think of prolotherapy as akin to accupuncture with tiny needle liquid injections -- it's as much operative from the accupuncture puncturing/stimulating of nerves/blood flow as it is from the injection liquid (we're talking conventional prolotherapy where the liguids are benign materials anyway--not PRP nor Stem Cell Prolotherapy). See Hauser's comments here: http://www.caringmedical.com/media_a...e_It_Works.htm and http://www.caringmedical.com/media_a...EBO_EFFECT.htm and http://www.caringmedical.com/videos/...le-blind-study
If PRP Prolotherapy and Stem Cell Prolotherapy was not effective, I don't think you'd see people like Tiger Woods and the nearly hundred other professional atheletes and others use the treatment form. Follow some of the links. You'll also note that the criticism of Blue Cross was that the effectiveness of the treatment depends upon the skills of the provider, which is one of the reasons they don't approve it yet nationwide. It is effective if done right by skilled practitioners, but it's not something that takes just one session. Some of the critiques did their analyses using only one session of prolotherapy. You have to remember the saying "follow the money". Conventional Orthopedics, which by the way has horrible statistics in its effectiveness in restoring the knee to its pre-injury state, uses far more expensive methods. These surgeons do not want their societies approving methods that are far less expensive.