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Hawks Set The Pace in Injection Science: September 25, 2012 Samantha Lane

1) Hawks set the pace in injection science, with Dr. Paul Marks pioneering a treatment called Orthokine therapy in Australia, which involves incubating a player's blood in test tubes and reinjecting it to promote healing from injuries. 2) This season alone, Marks has used Orthokine therapy to fast-track the recovery of about 20 AFL players from joint and soft-tissue injuries, including Hawthorn player Brent Guerra and St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt. 3) Marks believes Orthokine therapy, which has a 95% success rate and costs $1000, much less than surgery, will revolutionize injury treatment in the AFL and will likely be used by players to bank

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103 views2 pages

Hawks Set The Pace in Injection Science: September 25, 2012 Samantha Lane

1) Hawks set the pace in injection science, with Dr. Paul Marks pioneering a treatment called Orthokine therapy in Australia, which involves incubating a player's blood in test tubes and reinjecting it to promote healing from injuries. 2) This season alone, Marks has used Orthokine therapy to fast-track the recovery of about 20 AFL players from joint and soft-tissue injuries, including Hawthorn player Brent Guerra and St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt. 3) Marks believes Orthokine therapy, which has a 95% success rate and costs $1000, much less than surgery, will revolutionize injury treatment in the AFL and will likely be used by players to bank

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Hawks set the pace in injection science

September 25, 2012


Samantha Lane
NEEDLES, blood, athletes - the combination has proved ruinous in elite sport, but in AFL
football legal injecting is a burgeoning business that's accelerating the recovery of players
and giving clubs that are willing to experiment an edge.
Groundbreaking Orthokine therapy, which involves a series of blood injections, did not get
Hawthorn's Brent Guerra to the grand final in time, as the 2008 premiership player, who tore
his hamstring 24 days ago, yesterday pulled the pin on his grand final hopes. However, the
Hawks are at the forefront of a movement that Melbourne-based musculoskeletal radiologist
Dr Paul Marks predicts will soon be commonplace across the AFL and lead to players
banking their blood.
Six clubs have already tried Orthokine treatment and there has been an influx of interstate
players booking in to Melbourne's Olympic Park clinic, which is pioneering the treatment in
Australia.
This year alone Marks, who regularly assists Hawthorn on match days and practises at
Olympic Park, has fast-tracked the recovery of about 20 AFL players struck by joint and softtissue afflictions by injecting them with their own blood.
The blood is incubated in a test tube containing tiny glass beads before it is re-injected generally in three or four sessions - to the injured area.
Guerra received the treatment, as did St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt. But the player who
encouraged Marks that the treatment could revolutionise AFL football came from Essendon.
That player, whom the doctor would not name due to practitioner-patient confidentiality,
enjoyed such success using Orthokine that he returned from a soft-tissue injury that was
originally expected to sideline him for eight to 10 weeks after only five weeks.
Invented by German doctor Peter Wehling and used in Europe for about seven years,
Orthokine is approved by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority but is not approved in
America due to the US Food and Drug Administration's view that there should be more
independent trials of the technique. Orthokine therapy has been used at Melbourne's Olympic
Park clinic for the past eight months.
The method works because the glass beads in the test tubes draw out a chemical from the
blood that, when re-injected, promotes healing by countering another chemical - interleukin that causes pain and inflammation.
''It's been quite revolutionary. We've got AFL players flying in from all over the country at
the moment having end-of-season joint injections,'' Marks told The Age.
''This is all the patient's own blood, so it's very nice from that point of view. There are none
of those allergic-type reactions you get with whacky serums and things being injected.

''We've done probably 120 patients now and we're getting a 95 per cent response rate, which
is unheard of.
''It's 'performance-enabling', to use someone else's terms, but not really enhancing. We're just
speeding up the natural way of healing, if you like, with normal cells that are in your
bloodstream.''
The treatment costs about $1000, much less than surgery. Marks believes the cost will fall as
the technique becomes more popular - particularly in the AFL.
''I'm developing a lot of confidence in the product and I'm half thinking that, in a couple of
years' time, guys might just come in at the start of the pre-season and get their blood taken,''
he said. ''We'll store it and have it ready to go and, as they hurt themselves we'll have it
ready to go and just inject as needed to top them up, get them going and get the repair
processes started.
''I think it's going to be great with soft-tissue injuries and we're just seeing the tip of the
iceberg with this sort of stuff.''
Since Hawthorn won its last premiership in 2008, the club has employed a radiologist on
match days, regularly Marks, to administer injections - typically local anaesthetic - using
ultrasound technology. A Hawks supporter, Marks said last night that he believed Hawthorn
was the only club in the AFL that used ultrasound-guided injections on match days.
''We've got very good at targeting abnormal bits of tissue and abnormal tendons very
quickly,'' he said.
Marks said tendon injuries had been treated with a player's own blood for more than a
decade, but the technology had progressed.
''We had to be very careful [with re-injecting] because the AFL had a problem initially; we
had to make sure that it was done into a tendon rather than into a muscle because it was
initially thought to be like a type of blood doping,'' he said.
''Then we started to process the blood, just spinning it and getting out the plasma. Now we're
getting more specific about what we're getting out of the blood.''

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