Why Aren’t UK Dentists Using PRP?

A little while ago, I was talking to an experienced consultant dental surgeon working in a UK dental hospital about PRP (platelet rich plasma).

It’s been on my mind.

“Do you use PRP?” I asked.

“We’ve got the machine,” he said.

“A centrifuge?”

“Yes.”

I expected this.

”Do you use it?”

Then came the part I didn’t expect.

“I tried it once. Couldn’t get blood out of the patient so we abandoned.”

“The machine is gathering dust.”

I asked whether other departments like Oral Surgery were using it.

“I don’t think so.”

Now one conversation proves nothing. This is one clinician is not the whole profession. One hospital is not the whole NHS.

But the image stayed with me: a PRP centrifuge sitting unused in a hospital.

And what makes it even more interesting is this: many accounts of PRP’s history place dentistry and oral/maxillofacial surgery very close to the beginning of its clinical story.

So why, if dentistry helped start the PRP story, does PRP not appear to be routine in UK dentistry now?

Was it used more elsewhere in the world?

Did some UK dentists use it years ago and then retire without the practice continuing?

Was the evidence never strong enough?

Did the practicalities get in the way?

Or is dentistry, in some areas, still more comfortable with mechanical treatment than biological treatment?

PRP sounds simple enough in principle. Take the patient’s blood. Spin it. Concentrate the platelets. Use the patient’s own biological repair signals to support healing.

Dentistry is full of healing problems.

We extract teeth. We treat gum disease. We place implants. We manage bone defects. We treat infected tissues. We perform surgery in one of the most biologically active environments in the body.

So the question is not simply: “Does PRP work?”

The better question may be:

Why has PRP not become ordinary dental practice?

A quick Google search reveals not much is happening in private general dental practice either - which is the other area I kind of expected there to be PRP treatments going on.

There are obvious barriers.

Venepuncture is one.

But I am not sure this fully explains it. Dentists routinely perform technically demanding local anaesthetic blocks. An inferior dental block is not exactly simple. In many ways, venepuncture for PRP should be a learnable clinical skill for dentists, provided they are properly trained, insured and working within the correct governance framework.

There are practical barriers too.

PRP takes time. It requires equipment. It requires consumables. It requires space, protocols, documentation, consent, staff training and infection control procedures.

There are regulatory questions.

Is the treatment clearly within the dentist’s scope? Is it being used as part of dental treatment or as something more experimental? What does the indemnity provider say? What does the regulator require? What does the CQC or HIW position mean in practice? What are the MHRA implications? Does NHS dentistry have any realistic route to providing it, or is PRP inherently more suited to private care?

Then there is the evidence question.

If PRP improves healing a little, is that enough?

If it improves healing in some procedures but not others, which indications are worth the extra complexity?

If the evidence is promising but heterogeneous, how should an ordinary clinician respond?

And what should we call it?

A repair-enhancing treatment?

A biological adjunct?

A wound-healing support?

The language matters because inflated language can make sensible clinicians suspicious. For example “regenerative” may put some dentists off - because it’s not regenerative in the strict sense - it’s supporting repair.

Perhaps one reason PRP has not become mainstream in dentistry is that the marketing has sometimes sounded more certain than the evidence.

But perhaps the opposite is also true.

Perhaps dentists have been slow to adopt a biological tool because the profession has historically been trained to think mechanically: clean, shape, fill, drill, restore, replace.

PRP asks a different question.

How can we support the tissue to heal better?

How can we help the patient heal better?

These questions feel increasingly important to me.

I do not yet know whether PRP should become routine in UK dentistry. I do not know whether it will remain niche. I do not know whether its best future lies in oral surgery, periodontology, implant dentistry, endodontics, dry socket prevention, soft tissue healing or bone healing. .

But I do think the dusty centrifuge is worth thinking about.

Because sometimes the most interesting questions in medicine are not found in the treatment that everyone is using.

Sometimes they are found in the treatment that seemed promising, arrived in the building, and then quietly gathered dust.

Author: Dr Gwen Adey BDS Lond MFDS RCS Ed

First published: 31/05/26