Role of growth factors in tendon repair

The use of growth factors to treat sports injuries is in continuous expansion. The sharp rise in the use of this therapy in sports medicine is primarily based on a vast range of positive results and finds its rationale of application, both in the treatment of surgical pathologies at the intraoperative stage and in the care of muscle-tendon pathologies already treated with a conservative method. Nevertheless, experimental evidence, which can be traced to the optimal procedure of administering growth factors, their ideal characteristics, their activation, the ideal quantity of volume to use, the timing to conform to, with respect to the injurious event, the number of administrations, as well as the different rehabilitation protocols to follow after the treatment, is still lacking. This work, based on a study performed in Pubmed, Excerpta Medica/EMBASE and SciSearch data base, attempts to clarify the state of the art concerning the use of platelet growth factors to repair tendon damage. The conclusions indicate that the therapeutic feasibility and the biosafety of the therapy based on platelet growth factors make it possible and interesting to apply them in both surgical and conservative treatment. Nevertheless, to date, the level of evidence which has been found in bibliography is rather modest, and many aspects of their use would require further investigation.