Platelet rich plasma (PRP) is a part of blood that has been concentrated and is rich in platelets. It’s use was initially in hospital setting and newer technology allows us to harvest and concentrated enough quantity of platelets from only a small amount of blood drawn from the patient prior to outpatient surgery.
PRP speeds the normal healing process. During this process, the body produces many cells of specific types (often called growth factors) in the area of the wound in order to initiate healing. One of those cell types is platelets which perform many functions: formation of a blood clot and release of growth factors into the wound. These growth factors (platelet derived growth factors PGDF, transforming growth factor beta TGF and insulin-like growth factor ILGF) assist the body in repairing itself by stimulating stem cells to regenerate new tissue. The more growth factors released into the wound, the more stem cells stimulated to produce new host tissue. So PRP permits the body to heal faster and more efficiently. This process is short lived.
BMP (Bone Morphogenic Protein) is one of the growth factors that is released with PRP placement and it has been shown to stimulate the formation of new bone in humans. This is potentially helpful since needing more bone is common in dental implant placement. By adding PRP and thus stimulating some BMP production, to the potential implant site the implant surgeon can stimulate soft tissue healing (which is where PRP seems to exhibit it’s primary effect) and some bone growth stimulation.
Since PRP is a by-product of your own blood, disease transmission is not an issue. It can be generated in our practice during an outpatient surgical procedure, such as placement of dental implants. The biggest advantage of PRP is that it produces an increase of tissue growth and thus faster tissue regeneration.
At Burghfield Dental we use PRP technology for dental implants procedures, to find book your complimentary consultation with our dentist.