Subacromial injection of platelet-rich plasma provides greater improvement in pain and functional outcomes compared to corticosteroids at 1-year follow-up: a double-blinded randomised controlled trial

Review written by Jared Powell info

Key Points

  1. A corticosteroid injection (CSI) is superior to platelet rich plasma (PRP) at short term follow up.
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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

Rotator cuff related shoulder pain (RCRSP) is the most common form of shoulder pain, and it can be frustratingly resistant to many physiotherapeutic interventions. As a result, injection therapies are often recommended by medical professionals to help facilitate recovery in individuals with RCRSP. Corticosteroid injections (CSI) are the most well studied injection type for RCRSP, and they may have a small, short term effect in reducing pain and improving shoulder function (1).

Notwithstanding the short-term effectiveness of CSI’s, there are issues pertaining to possible deleterious side effects on local soft tissue of the shoulder (2), which should be considered by clinicians and patients alike. As such, various orthobiologics, the most prominent being platelet-rich plasma (PRP), are having their moment in the spotlight as an alternative injection type to CSI’s because there doesn’t seem to be the same concern about side effects.

The study under examination in this review pitted PRP against CSI in a group of individuals with RCRSP.

Corticosteroid injections are the most well studied injection type for rotator cuff related shoulder pain, and they may have a small, short-term effect in reducing pain and improving shoulder function.
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If we compared platelet rich plasma to really any other treatment, we likely wouldn’t see this long-term effect of PRP because other interventions do not have this ‘bounce back effect’ that we see with corticosteroid injections.

METHODS

Double blinded, randomized controlled trial.

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