Baseball Legend Partners with PRP Clinic
When you walk into the IMAC Regeneration Center in Chesterfield, Missouri, you are greeted by baseball memorabilia. And if you’re lucky, The Wizard himself might walk in. After a brilliant career with the San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals, Osborne “Ozzie” Smith retired from Major League Baseball after the 1996 season. A career in television followed. He made it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002.
Smith’s newest role is a partner of the Chesterfield clinic. He became a believer in platelet-rich plasma therapy after he received treatment for shoulder pain at the IMAC Center in Kentucky. The PRP therapy helped so much that he decided to put his name on the door. Smith was the Chesterfield center’s first patient. This new facility will be convenient for people from St. Louis who previously had to drive down to Paducah, Kentucky, to receive PRP treatments.
PRP therapy utilizes the patient’s own blood to treat degenerative conditions. A small sample of blood is extracted and put into a centrifuge machine in the laboratory. This separates the platelet-rich plasma, which is then injected back at the site of pain. Smith says his body had really started to show the effects of 15 years of diving around on Astroturf and playing so much golf.
The doctors, nurses, therapists, and chiropractors at the clinic specialize in non-surgical treatment of knee, hip, and back pain. It is not only professional athletes who are benefitting. One of the clinic’s patients, Kevin Richterkessing, works at a construction company. Years of heavy equipment operation have injured his back, and he was told surgery was unavoidable. However, in less than two weeks of receiving PRP therapy, Richterkessing’s pain was gone and he felt he was on the path of recovery.
One of the physicians at the Ozzie Smith Center, Dr. David Smithson, M.D., explains the protocol they follow: “We first take the pressure off the vertebral discs in the back with the help of special decompression machines. We then inject platelet-rich plasma to repair and tighten the damaged ligaments surrounding the discs.” Depending on the patient and their problem, the healing effect can be further augmented by stem cell treatment, which the clinic also offers. In the meantime, Ozzie Smith is delighted to be back on the golf course again after just three weeks of disc decompression and PRP treatment.
References:
- http://www.ksdk.com/entertainment/television/show-me-st-louis/show-me-st-louis-tours-the-ozzie-smith-center-1/327405798
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozzie_Smith
