The same techniques and drugs have been used successfully for pain relief from ligament laxity for nearly sixty years. Prolotherapy is now gaining wider acceptance for painful musculoskeletal and ligamentous problems and has demonstrated long lasting results. Since the intent of the technique is to create inflammation, pain, swelling, and redness the result can sometimes be more than anticipated. The injections are also painful because the placement of the needle at the fibro-osseous junction is also a tender site. Since the skin is broken with a needle infection is a possibility, but very few infections have been reported.
Serious complications are very rare.
Deaths have been reported from prolotherapy, but not in the last 25 years. Prolotherapy has proven a safe therapeutic technique in well trained hands, but is not easy to learn. The prolotherapist must have training in the form of workshops, apprenticeships, and be a true student of functional anatomy. Prolotherapy done by trained hands is an effective treatment method for the pain and dysfunction of ligament laxity. In summary, accidents which cause ligament strains are normally healed by a process called inflammation.