O-Shot® in Charleston and Mt. Pleasant, SC

Reviewed by Ashley Harwyn, PA-C  |  A4M Board Certified  |  Updated September 3, 2026

Most pages about this procedure tell you it is safe, natural and effective. Two of those three are defensible. This page will show you the actual evidence, including the part that argues against it, because you are being asked to pay for something out of pocket and you deserve to make that decision with the real numbers in front of you.

Hear from Ashley

What the randomized trial actually found

Fifty-two women were randomized, half to a single PRP injection into the anterior vaginal wall and half to saline, then followed for six months. Neither the participants nor the assessors knew which they had received [1].

The headline result is the one in the chart above. On the Patient Global Impression of Improvement, 69.2 percent of the PRP group reported improvement at six months against 34.6 percent of the placebo group, and that difference was statistically significant [1].

The part that is usually left out

When the researchers looked at the components of sexual function separately, desire, arousal, lubrication and orgasm, every one of them moved in the right direction and not one of them reached statistical significance against placebo on its own [1].

Were women like you actually studied?

The trial enrolled sexually active premenopausal women between 18 and 50, without severe sexual dysfunction [1]. That is a narrower group than the women this treatment is usually marketed to.

If you are postmenopausal, or your symptoms are severe, the honest position is that the evidence for you is weaker rather than stronger. It may still be a reasonable thing to try. It is not a thing anyone can promise you, and the hormonal picture usually deserves attention first through hormone therapy or local estrogen.

Will the O-Shot help urinary incontinence?

This is where this page will differ from most others in Charleston, and it is the section worth reading twice if leaking is what brought you here.

A systematic review examined PRP for both female sexual dysfunction and stress urinary incontinence across 12 studies and 327 women. In the one randomized comparison it identified, the midurethral sling performed significantly better than PRP injections for stress incontinence, on both of the measures used [2].

How strong is the evidence, honestly?

The same systematic review pooled 12 studies covering 327 women, with a mean age of 51. Improvements were consistent across the scales used: the Female Sexual Function Index rose from 14 to 28, and the Vaginal Health Index from 11 to 19 [2].

Then it states its own conclusion plainly, and it is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing: the level of current evidence is low, because of methodological problems in the available studies [2]. Small samples, inconsistent preparation methods, short follow-up. Eleven of the twelve studies were observational rather than randomized.

That is the true state of it. Promising early results, one good randomized trial, and not yet the body of evidence that would let anyone responsibly promise you an outcome.

What is the safety record?

This is the strongest part of the picture and it is genuinely reassuring. Across 327 women in the systematic review, fewer than one percent experienced any adverse event: three patients in total, two who reported extreme arousal and one with temporary urinary retention. All three resolved without further treatment [2]. The randomized trial reported no serious adverse events [1].

Because the preparation uses your own platelets, drawn from your own blood on the day, there is no donor material and no risk of an allergic reaction to a foreign substance.

Why the subscale result is the part to hold on to

It is tempting to read one strong headline number and stop there, and most pages about this procedure do exactly that. The more useful reading is that the overall impression of improvement moved clearly while the individual components did not reach significance on their own. That pattern is common in small trials and it has a specific meaning: the finding is real enough to take seriously and too coarse to promise you a particular outcome.

So if someone tells you this will fix desire specifically, or lubrication specifically, they are describing something the trial did not show. The honest version is that women in the treated group were more likely to say they were better overall, which is a genuine result and a smaller claim than the one usually made.