Your sore joint and the available care come first

The clinic may benefit if you book a visit

The same owners publish this guide and run the Phoenix-area QC Kinetix clinics. You'll sometimes be directed to their Chandler office for a consultation. If you book care after reading, the clinic business can benefit. That connection is stated so you can weigh the information for yourself.

At QC Kinetix, regenerative treatments are non-surgical shots using a patient's blood or marrow. PRP is one choice; its full name is platelet-rich plasma, the pale liquid kept after clinic equipment spins drawn blood. The liquid has more platelets, the tiny blood parts that help form clots. A clinician puts the prepared liquid in the painful joint or tendon. The shot may reduce soreness, but no result is certain.

Clinic staff will ask when your soreness began and what movement worsens it. Bring earlier X-ray findings along with your medicine list. Find out which liquid is used, where the needle goes, and what risks it brings. Also ask how long your usual activity may be limited.

Get the full written cost before you choose treatment. Find out which visits are included and whether more care may be offered. Your own exam, health history, and budget guide the final choice.

Sources

1. RESTORE, the largest and most rigorously blinded placebo-controlled PRP trial in knee OA (n=288, participant-, injector- and assessor-blinded), gave three weekly injections of a commercial leukocyte-poor PRP or saline. At 12 months the change in knee pain was -2.1 vs -1.8 points (difference -0.4; 95% CI -0.9 to 0.2; P=.17) and the change in medial tibial cartilage volume was -1.4% vs -1.2% (difference -0.2%; P=.81). Twenty-nine of 31 prespecified secondary outcomes showed no between-group difference. The authors concluded the findings do not support the use of PRP for knee OA.

   Bennell KL, et al. — Effect of Intra-articular Platelet-Rich Plasma vs Placebo Injection on Pain and Medial Tibial Cartilage Volume in Patients With Knee Osteoarthritis: The RESTORE Randomized Clinical Trial.. JAMA, 2021. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2021.19415.

2. A network meta-analysis of 11 RCTs (1,353 patients) with HIP osteoarthritis found that at 2-4 and 6 months NO intervention - corticosteroid, hyaluronic acid or PRP - significantly outperformed intra-articular saline placebo for either pain or function, while all interventions including placebo produced improvement exceeding the minimal clinically important difference from baseline. Evidence from the knee does not transfer to the hip.

   Gazendam A, et al. — Intra-articular saline injection is as effective as corticosteroids, platelet-rich plasma and hyaluronic acid for hip osteoarthritis pain: a systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2021. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2020-102179.

3. A meta-analysis of 11 RCTs (730 patients) with lateral epicondylitis found the timing reverses the answer: corticosteroid was significantly BETTER than PRP in the short term (under 2 months: VAS mean difference 0.93 favouring steroid; DASH 10.23 favouring steroid), the two did not differ at 2-6 months, and PRP was significantly better at 6 months or more (VAS -2.18; DASH -8.13; Mayo Elbow +16.53).

   Xu Y, et al. — Platelet-Rich Plasma Has Better Results for Long-term Functional Improvement and Pain Relief for Lateral Epicondylitis: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2024. DOI: 10.1177/03635465231213087.

4. A meta-analysis with meta-regression of 10 Level I-II studies (696 patients) of PRP augmentation during rotator cuff repair classified trials by whether the platelet concentration factor exceeded a 4-fold increase over whole blood. Neither patient-reported outcomes nor retear rates differed between high-dose and low-dose PRP - a direct test of the 'more platelets is better' premise, which it did not support in this setting.

   Lim JJ, et al. — Platelet Concentration Does Not Influence Clinical Efficacy and Retear Rates of Rotator Cuff Repair With Platelet-Rich Plasma: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis With Meta-Regression.. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2026. DOI: 10.1177/03635465261434001.

5. A multicenter prospective crossover randomized trial randomised 40 patients with discogenic chronic low back pain to a saline trigger-point control, intradiscal PRP, or intradiscal bone marrow concentrate, with crossover permitted for non-responders. Both PRP and BMC produced statistically significant improvement in pain and function with no adverse events, hospitalisations or surgery at 12 months - but ALL placebo patients reported under 50% relief and crossed over, and the trial was small and open-label.

   Navani A, et al. — The Safety and Effectiveness of Orthobiologic Injections for Discogenic Chronic Low Back Pain: A Multicenter Prospective, Crossover, Randomized Controlled Trial with 12 Months Follow-up.. Pain Physician, 2024.

6. A network meta-analysis restricted to LARGE randomized trials (at least 100 patients per group; 57 RCTs, 22,795 participants, 18 intra-articular interventions) found treatment effects were consistently larger in the 35 high-risk-of-bias trials than in the 22 low/unclear-risk trials. In the main analysis excluding high-risk trials, triamcinolone had the highest probability of exceeding the minimal important difference at weeks 2 and 6; hyaluronic acid had no effect on pain (SMD -0.04, 95% CrI -0.19 to 0.11, 11 trials) but higher odds of dropouts due to adverse events (OR 2.01) and of serious adverse events (OR 1.86). The effects of 16 of the 18 interventions were smaller than the MID and most were consistent with placebo effects.

   Pereira TV, et al. — Effectiveness and safety of intra-articular interventions for knee and hip osteoarthritis based on large randomized trials: A systematic review and network meta-analysis.. Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.joca.2024.08.014.