Autologous Blood Injections for patella tendonitis/tendonosis

[australia]

In response to your question, I believe one's age does affect the length of recovery.  The older one is the longer the recovery.  I am 42 now, and developed patellar tendinitis 3 years ago (related to too much bicycling.)  While I continue to have symptoms, these are some of the keys points of the past three years:

-- The level of pain has decreased each year.  (I actually wrote down daily pain scores for 2 years, and now still keep a diary of key events.)  I hope and expect my pain to further diminish each year over the next few years.

-- The amount of pain during a typical day has decreased.  The pain used to be all day; later I had pain mostly in the afternoons and evening; now I have pain on and off.  The pain used to be such that it was difficult to concentrate on anything else.

-- I had a 2-3 month period with substantially low pain a number of months ago.  It was the most normal I've felt in the past 3 years.  Pain has increased somewhat since then, but it is still lower than each of the past couple of years.

-- I stretch 30 minutes every day.  (15 minutes in the morning; 15 minutes in the evening)  I started this 2 years ago.  I believe this has helped.  I stretch my quadricepts; hamstrings; hip flexors; calfs; IT-band, etc... I also use a foam roller for the IT band.

-- I can reduce my pain to zero when I wear a patellar strap.  I wore this for a year or so.

-- I had done "eccentric exercises" for a number of months in the Fall of 2006.  There is a lot of positive research on these exercises for patellar tendinitis.  You just need to know how to do them, and make sure you ramp up very slowly and not over-do it.  Unfortunately, not many people are aware of how to do these.

I was advised not to do any surgery by 3 different orthopedists after my MRI, which showed patellar tendinitis.

I have never seen any serious scientific research on autologous blood treatments, so I am distrustful of it at this point.  I have generally kept up to date on the medical literature relating to patellar tendinitis.  Eccentric exercises seem to be evolving as the "gold standard" for treating longstanding patellar tendinitis.

[Clive369]

Hi Paddy,

Thanks for sharing your experience which is interesting. I'm sure I'm stating the blindingly obvious when I say you may never know quite how bleak OR bright the future may be until you do the whole programme, physio + ABI? Good luck.

IanT - thanks for sharing your update. You're right about staying positive - one of the hardest issues is simply continuing to believe that the problem can get better and not losing hope. This isn't made any easier by fact that, in truth, most people including front line GPs + physios know jack about the condition. 

Clive

[ALRunner]

Ian and the original poster, and others, how are you doing now?

I have had what must be patellar tendinosis (despite MRIs and physician consults, the first term I heard the term was by surfing the net on it) for over two years now after ramping up for a marathon. My symptoms are mild tightness (used to be quite severe but in the last several months has toned down to generally mild, but definitely worse first thing in the morning), mild or no pain (which turns into moderate pain if I exercise too much) and a clicking knee (scar tissue on the tendon?). MRIs are mostly clean, the last one indicating a possible minor or mild patellar tendon tear.

I've been doing eccentric work for a couple of months now. I feel better, but it's hard to say if that's because of the eccentric or a continued downturn in training (I like to do short triathlons and have gotten through mild training for them the last two summers, but this summer I will not do it unless I can lick this problem).

BTW, the reason I have this is I'm quite sure a hip/pelvic imbalance from a muscle and flexibility standpoint. I stretch everything now.

I'd like to know how others are doing. I have found a guy online who cured (for 2.5 years until a recent relapse, which I think he attributes to basically having forgotten about the treatment he did) a 4 month long bout of patellar tendinosis in 6 weeks of doing eccentric work 3-5 times/week, 10-15 reps for 3 sets with a slow negative and then both legs for the positive. He goes relatively deep into the pain zone when training and training to tendon pain with eccentrics is supported in at least one study, though others will say that it's overdoing it and slowing recovery. He is a PT and prescriptions of this to his clients have netted positive results. He likes to feel no pain during the eccentric rep, but that moment of transition to concentric there is a twinge of pain. I've noted in most areas that the advice is to use a 25 degree decline board and do not bend beyond 90 degrees. A decline board, btw, can be made out of ply and strongly gluing some sand paper to it (that's what I do).

[greyhound]

I have also appreciated your insights and hearing your stories.  I know this is quite an old post.  However, if any of you who were treated at the Wimbeldon clinic happen to check in, I would be interested in knowing the doctor who performed the autologous blood injections.  I am looking for a doctor in the UK for this type of treatment.  You can send me a message privately.  Many thanks!

[shipitin]

@greyhound
I had mine done at Wimbledon but cannot remember the name of the surgeon/doc? I might remember if you give me some names to remember.

MEANWHILE, I have torn and had replaced the Anterior Cruciate on the other knee whilst skiing, and had a Patellar tendon graft.  Interestingly the tendon from which the graft is extracted causes me the most ongoing problems, similar to the original tendonitis in the other knee.

I am back to skiing now but wear a brace on my left (damaged ACL) knee.  My right knee (patella tendonitis) seems to have made a full recovery.

My lesson from all this is; keep as fit as you need to be for the level of sport you want to participate in.  Strength dissipates with age and one cannot expect to maintain the strength of someone in their 20s or 30s when over 40! One can recover when older, but probably never back to as good as before.  But it certainly takes application and discipline with the physiotherapy.

[Jimbob2]

Hey guys I’m new to this forum and although I don’t have any knee problems I am suffering with the same tendonosis problem described in this post but in both my elbows, lateral epicondylitis a.k.a Tennis elbow.
It was good reading this post and I really agree with what clive said about staying positive.  Some day’s I just find myself going mad and in total despair, it can be very depressing to suddenly have to quit doing all the activity’s you enjoy. 
I was just posting for the same reason greyhound was, wondering if anyone has had autologous blood injection in the UK.  Is this the same thing as Platelet rich plasma injection? (PRP ) Where they take out your own blood and separate the platelets in a centrifuge  then re inject them into the affected tendon to speed up the bodys natural healing process.
I have been looking into it and so far only found of one private clinic in London mentioned in this article, but it also mentions there are a few NHS hospitals performing it here is the link : http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/features/view/135016/I-was-cured-by-my-own-blood#

My story:
I have been suffering with lateral epicondylitis in both arms for around 4 months now, although the problem has been manifesting for quite some time.  The first time I ever experienced the pain in and around my forearms was during weight training about 18 months ago.  It started very mild and was felt only during training but progressively worsened over a couple of weeks or so.  I would end up having to take a week off all training which I used to do periodically anyway.  After this I would be back to normal and ready to continue training, or so I thought.  This happened about 3 times over roughly a year entill recently sometime near the end of January which has now become a real problem and will not heal. 

 After stopping training with weights and using the doctor’s advice of resting, taking a course of NSAID's and applying ice there was no improvement. This is when I started to research all about tendinapathy and read all about tendonitis and tendonosis.  I bought an E book called “Target tendonitis” and found that what I had was almost defiantly tedonosis, which has little to do with immflamation and is in fact degeneration of the tendon from repeated failure to heal.

 The book contained physiotherapy exercises to do, basically just eccentric light weight isolation Exercises to be done frequently along with nutritional advice, supplements worth getting ect, so I started implementing the techniques.  I explained this to the doctor and although he didn't seem to of ever heard of the condition tendonosis he agreed with me that this is what I have.  After pressing on my forearm and near the elbow he said I had lateral epicondylitis a.k.a tennis elbow.  He agreed I was taking the correct cause of action and to be patient as these injury's are renowned for taking a long time to heal.

A few weeks after this my condition began to worsen gradually as a result of my Job being repetitive on my arms,  So I ended up signed off from work.  I am now only on SSP and getting only half my normal wage, which is leaving me very short on money to support myself and my partner.  This is becoming a serious disability to me and is completely ruining my quality of life.  I am no longer able to and have been for quite some time to enjoy an active life style.  I am desperate to get back to work and to my hobbies and sports which I love such as Surfing, Playing my drums and computer gaming.

I was referred to an NHS physiotherapist who again seemed to know less about this problem than me. She tried to tell me tendonitis and tendonosis where the same thing.  She did however tell me that the eccentric exercises I was using where the correct cause of action, and that I should continue to do them 3 times a day for 15 reps and to also do some stretches.

After 6 weeks off work and still not much better with only a slight improvement I returned to work to see how I got on as I was running out of full Sick pay.  Only for the pain start to relapse and again worsen so am now again signed off.