Autologous platelet gel, developed from fresh autologous blood, is a breakthrough in the promotion and acceleration of soft tissue and bone repair. The application of autologous platelet gel has been reported to improve haemostasis and promote function recovery. We screened the randomized controlled trials and controlled clinical trials of high quality to investigate whether autologous platelet gel makes a better performance for postoperative bleeding and functional recovery in patients after total knee arthroplasty.
The Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and PubMed databases were comprehensively searched. A total of 1234 patients with 1333 knees were included in the twelve studies. The PRISMA guidelines and Cochrane Handbook were applied to appraise the results published in all included studies. Review Manager 5.3 for Windows was used to analyse the extracted data.
Compared with the placebo group, the autologous platelet gel group showed a significant decrease in visual analogue scale. No significant differences were found in the drop of haemoglobin, knee society score, Western ontario mcmaster osteoarthritis index, length of hospital stay, postoperative narcotics, and range of motion during post-operative follow-up.
Compared with placebo, APG offers superior pain control after total knee arthroplasties. However, APG has no advantage in blood loss, functional recovery, postoperative narcotics and length of stay. The use of autologous platelet gel is not worthy of being recommended as a bioactive autologous material to improve the clinical outcomes in total knee arthroplasty patients.