North American Platelet-Rich Plasma Symposium

July 15, 2011 - PRLog -- The North American Platelet-Rich Plasma Symposium will be held in September 2011 in Toronto and will feature several renowned speakers.  Harvest Technologies is sponsoring the symposium.

Michael Clarfield, MD and Gordon Ko, MD have been selected as co-moderators.  Clarfield is with The Sports Medicine Specialist, Tornonto, Ontario, and Ko is with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Markham, Ontario.

Dr. Anthony Galea was originally chosen as the symposium’s moderator, but has since withdrawn.  Galea is known in sports medicine for treating high-profile athletes and was under investigation in the United States for smuggling human growth hormone (HGH) and other performance enhancing drugs to professional athletes.  In early July 2011, he plead guilty in a Federal Court to charges that he smuggled medication into the United States, including several doses of Human Growth Hormone.

One symposium speaker will be Joseph Purita, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon in Boca Raton, Florida who is an advocate for human growth hormone and has used PRP and stem cell technology in the treatment of New York Yankees pitcher Bartolo Colon.  Purita is under investigation by Major League Baseball for possibly using HGH in the procedure on Colon.  Purita maintains that it was not used with Colon, although he has admitted to using HGH with other procedures.

Dr. Dennis Lox, a physical and regenerative medicine specialist in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, states that platelet-rich plasma and regenerative medicine techniques, including stem cell technology, have been used in the past within a variety of elite athletic competitors, without the controversy of using performance-enhancing drugs.  

“Currently, regenerative techniques such as platelet-rich plasma and stem cell technology are not in violation with professional sports,” said Dr. Lox.  “It is the use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone where problems occur.  These can be easily avoided in athletes and there is no reason to suspect that the efficacy of the treatment will be hindered.”


http://www.DrLox.com

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Dennis M. Lox, M.D. is board certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Since 1990, he has used sports medicine techiques and cutting-edge technology to help heal musculoskeletal injuries and relieve pain.