By RICHARD BURGER 

Typically, when you think about good health, inflammation is something you would want to avoid.

But an innovative program at Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center is using inflammation to cure chronic ligament pain with natural processes, rather than surgery.

The program is called proliferative therapy, or prolotherapy for short, and is used at Yakima Regional’s rehabilitation clinic to cure chronic pain by causing the body to grow new ligament tissue in areas where existing tissue has grown weak.

The only practitioner of the program in the Yakima Valley is Dr. Sean Mullin.

He said ligament problems most often occur in the shoulder, elbow, wrist, or ankle, as well as in the sacroiliac joint in the lower back.

The therapy involves injecting a mild sugar solution into the painful area, in a large enough dose to cause inflammation.

That increases the blood flow to the area, and brings with it cells and chemicals naturally produced by the body.

Mullin said these include fibroblasts, a type of cell that synthesizes the structural framework for tissues, and are the most common cell of connective tissue, such as ligaments.  

When the connective tissue is strengthened and rebuilt, the chronic pain caused by the weak tissue is eliminated.

The therapy involves a monthly injection over a five-month period, Dr. Mullin said, and the patient typically begins to feel better after the third injection.

Each treatment session lasts only about 20 minutes, he said.

Dr. Mullin said he decided to pursue prolotherapy when he realized that many of the patients he treated were not getting long-term relief from chronic pain.

“I treat a lot of musculoskeletal disorders,” he said. “I was seeing too many people that weren’t getting better.”

He began to consider what could be done to provide long-term relief, other than surgery, when he recalled having heard about prolotherapy.

Dr. Mullin received training in the program at a private medical facility in Denver, Colo., through the American Association of Orthopedic Medicine.

He also recently participated in training in Mexico, with six other prolotherapy practitioners.

“There is not a lot of musculoskeletal treatment available there,” Dr. Mullin said. 

He and his fellow physicians, whom he described as “six of the best prolotherapists in the world,” saw 500 patients over a week’s time.

“It was half mission and half training,” Dr. Mullin said.

The results of the therapy can be amazing.

Dr. Mullin recounts the experience of a recent patient, a woman who suffered significant chronic pain in her lower back.

He said she experienced three days of pain after simply walking a mile, but she was able to run in a marathon after her therapy.

Dr. Mullin has also benefitted from the therapy himself.

He said he had experienced problems in his upper back and neck that often made it painful to turn his head.

After only three injections, he gained 35 degrees more range of motion and 80 percent less pain, he said.

Dr. Mullin said there are continuing advances in the therapy, and there is a new buzzword in the field, “PRP,” which stands for platelet-rich plasma.

“It is prolotherapy with a difference,” he said.

The PRP is used in place of the sugar solution and has more of an inflammatory effect, to increase the production of the cells that repair weakened tissues.

Dr. Mullin said he would like to build awareness of prolotherapy in Yakima Regional’s service area because he believes it has advantages over other treatment options, such as surgery.

“If you can avoid surgery or ongoing physical and other types of therapies, it is going to cost a lot less, the patient will have less down time, and will feel better,” Dr. Mullin said.

He said the first step in taking advantage of the program is to contact him at the Central Washington Rehabilitation Clinic to schedule an examination.

He can be reached at the clinic at (509) 575-5071.