There are various kinds of PRP therapies (for skin rejuvenation, hair restoration, injury healing, pain management, etc.) but there is one common denominator that unites all of them – the PRP injection. It contains the incredible platelets which have now become famous for their remarkable healing properties. These cell fragments are injected back into the body of the patient to stimulate tissue and cell growth in the treated area. That, however, is the very last phase of a typical PRP therapy. To get the special solution in the PRP injections, medical professionals need to carry out a preparation procedure which naturally requires the use of Plasma Fresh Platelet-Rich Plasma kit. The stages of this process can be outlined in the following order:

Step 1 – Collection of blood from the patient
Step 2 – Separation of platelet-rich plasma
Step 3 – Processing the separated autologous plasma
Step 4 – Injecting the patient with PRP

Here, it should be noted, that all steps of the PRP injection preparation need to be performed by a certified medical technician only (physician, aesthetic dermatologists, doctor, etc.).

Collection of blood from the patient

The basic principle of Platelet-Rich Plasma therapy is all about providing the patients with a natural treatment using platelets (fragmented cells that have healing properties) from their own blood. That is why, to obtain the PRP solution for the therapy injection, the medical expert first needs to collect blood from the patient’s vein. It is best if a top-grade PRP extraction kit like Plasma Fresh is used for this process. In that way, the procedure will be more time-efficient and less painful.

The sample of blood that is typically collected is between 10-60 microliters. The exact amount depends on the type of PRP therapy that is to be performed. However, it is always under 2 ounces which means that the blood loss is minimal and it has zero effect on the patient’s condition or health. The blood is collected in a tube made of medical glass (such as the one included in the Plasma Fresh extraction kit).

Separation of platelet-rich plasma

The collected blood is far from ready for injection since it is still in a rough and non-centrifugated form. In other words, it is a mixture of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelet-rich plasma, and platelet-poor plasma. To separate the plasma that has a high concentration of platelets, the medical technician carrying out the procedure needs to isolate them from the red blood cells and the plasma with a low concentration of platelets. That is achieved through a special machine called centrifuge. The glass tube is placed inside this device where it is spun at a very fast speed which ends up layering up the different parts of the patient’s blood. Once this process is finished, platelet-poor plasma ends up at the very top of the tube, while red blood cells are pushed to the bottom. White blood cells and platelet-rich plasma is right between them to spread in a very thin layer since together they make up barely 1% of the collected blood. This layer is often referred to as “the buffy coat” and it is the main (sometimes the only component) of the PRP injection.

Processing the separated autologous plasma

After the centrifugation of the blood, the physician extracts the platelet-rich middle layer of the solution in the tube. This is done with a syringe and a needle and it takes just a few minutes. Once that is done, PRP is injected into the treatment area.

Additives can also be included

Some Platelet-Rich Plasma therapies may require the inclusion of additives into the PRP injection. It is believed that they can further speed up the healing or rejuvenation process or prolong the results from the treatment. Solutions such as calcium chloride and thrombin are among those additives as they can increase the healing properties of the platelets. Therefore, some PRP therapy injections contain not only platelet-rich plasma and white cells but also a few extra ingredients that can spice up the treatment and make it even more effective.

Injecting the patient with PRP

Once the health-boosting cocktail is processed and mixed, the patient is injected with it. Medical technicians who use Plasma Fresh can rely on the kit not only when they are extracting plasma from the treated individual but also when they inject the PRP solution back into the patient.

Why no two PRP injections are the same?

The basic component of a PRP therapy injection may be plasma-rich platelets but that does not mean that every injection contains the same amount of PRP. The latter depends on several factors among which are the concentration of white blood cells and platelets in an individual’s blood, as well as on whether the solution in the injection includes additives. The first two factors are hard to predict because every person has a different blood. Also, the level of PRP in the injection depends on the way the centrifugation process was carried out, the amount of blood that was collected from the patient and other variables. Still, Plasma Fresh PRP kit was designed to make the PRP therapy process as effective as possible and to help medical experts treat patients with a solution that has a high PRP count.