Obtaining PRP for dental medicine.

The use of Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) to treat tissue damage has gained importance in recent years in the field of regenerative medicine, with dental medicine being the area in which it has met the greatest success.

What is PRP?

PRP can be defined as the liquid fraction (plasma) resulting from the processing of peripheral blood, which has a higher concentration of platelets than that present in circulating plasma.

Platelets play a fundamental role in tissue regeneration, as they release growth factors and other molecules that act as chemoattractants for certain cell types and allow them to flow into the damaged area, repairing it.

How to obtain PRP from a blood sample?

There are different methods to obtain PRP from a blood sample, and the main difference between them is the centrifugation conditions. Depending on the characteristics of the sample to be centrifuged and on the working conditions, universal centrifuges or smaller equipment, such as the Plasma 22 centrifuge, may be needed.

For one of these methods, the only material required is a benchtop centrifuge and GPS tubes (GPS system, Biomet Merck Biomaterials).

Briefly, for this method one has to start from 54 ml. of peripheral blood, which is mixed with 6 ml. of anticoagulant. The 60 ml. of mixture is placed in a GPS tube and centrifuged for 12 minutes at 3,200 RPM.

As a result of the centrifugation, different fractions are formed inside the GPS tube (figure 1).

The following steps consist of consecutive extractions, first of the PPP (platelet-poor plasma), and finally of the PRP (platelet-rich plasma),by manually pressing a plunger that is incorporated in the GPS tube itself.

The advantage of this system is that it is closed, so contamination is avoided and it is easier to handle, avoiding having to work in externally sterile conditions.

The use of PRP in regenerative medicine has been established as a cutting-edge technique, especially useful in the field of dental medicine, and to obtain PRP, peripheral blood centrifugation is a fundamental step.