Ask The Doctor :: prolotherapy, Workman's compensation,

Thanks for your recent letter. Looks like you've become a victim of what I call the "unleveled" playing field. While the vast majority of what your worker's comp guidelines approve of have very little hard scientific evidence to support it's efficacy, a religious crusade is launched against certain treatments not based on science, but more based on "tradition". For example, while there is soft scientific evidence that lumbar epidural injections work, there is less scientific evidence that cervical epidurals are effective. Your worker's comp guidelines should therefore exclude cervical epidurals, however, they do not, so that's where the politics come enter stage right. I've attached a literature review we did for NIH a few years ago. As you can see, there is quite a bit published. Your specific denial letter is a bit of a scientific joke. It quotes someone else's guidelines and a critical review of prolo. The Yelland study that they quote actually showed very remarkable improvements with ligament injections in a reasonably well done study. The problem with the study is that they compared 10% glucose injections vs.. just anesthethetic (not saline as stated) and didn't define the patient population they were treating (SI joint pain, facet pain, myofascial pain, etc...) Nobody uses 10% Glucose for prolo, so I don't know where they got that concentration. Either way, Yelland injected ligaments in both groups, which in and of itself is prolotherapy (meaning the injection of ligaments with anything will disrupt the ligament and cause inflammation, the cornerstone of why this works). I've also attached two papers that we wrote (one published and one recently submitted).