Thank you for your question!
You’re asking a question that is very simple and hopefully I would be able to educate you
our approach is to hair loss is. You’re asking what is better for a hair fall: PRP
or mesotherapy? So what essentially you’re asking is what surgical and non-surgical and
non-pharmaceutical option is better from these two injection options.
I can certainly give you some guidance. I am a board certified cosmetic surgeon practicing
for over 20 years in Manhattan and Long Island performing hair transplant surgery as well
as non-surgical solutions for hair loss. In fact, I’m the founder of Trichostem™ Hair
Regeneration centers which is based on Hair Regeneration treatment we’ve developed in
our practice using a combination of platelet-rich plasma and extracellular matrix. In fact,
our approach has been so successful that it has dramatically reduced the number of hair
transplants we perform in a given year. Patients come from all over the world to afford this
treatment. So I’m going a little bit of perspective based on my understanding of the
two options you asked for before how we approach hair loss in our office.
So to begin with, what does PRP do and what does mesotherapy do? Well certainly, I can
help you with the PRP. PRP is platelet-rich plasma. It’s derived from your own blood
and it is a concentration of the wound healing factors that stimulate some certain key elements
to the skin when it’s injected. So it’ll improve fat cells, it’ll improve blood supply,
it’ll improve the collagen. And secondarily, it would stimulate short-term growth of hair.
Now from our experience, from the patients who come to us who have had PRP injections
done elsewhere, the challenge is that you need frequent treatments. You need to go at
least once a month and in some place once in 2-3 months but it means that you’re getting
only short-term benefit and you’re not getting a long-term sustainability.
Now the subject of mesotherapy, for those trained in the United States and trained in
Allopathic medicine and even with this understanding of some of the elements of what constitutes
mesotherapy. Mesotherapy is something of a controversial issue because in other areas,
particularly in European countries where mesotherapy is practiced, there is some belief in its
value. Mesotherapy is essentially the use of various vitamin solutions and other things
that are injected to areas whether it’s the face of the scalp. I personally don’t
perform mesotherapy but from what I understand, I would not consider mesotherapy to be of
any value for hair loss and I don’t wish to disparage anyone or insult anybody but
frankly, hair loss that is 90% is genetic hair loss. It is not from vitamin deficiency
or any other nutritional or conceptually the delivery of even a DHT blocker into the skin
because it doesn’t work that way.
Hair loss is genetic and the ways that we treat hair loss in the United States are basically
prior to what we developed are pharmaceuticals which include minoxidil and finasteride. In
our practice, many people come to us who don’t want to take finasteride because of fears
of sexual dysfunction while on the other side, that is hair restoration surgery which a lot
of people won’t do because of variety of reason and because of the limitations. You
can only have so much hair that you can transplant before you run out of donor area. That is
the true limitation regardless of technique.
So Hair Regeneration is what we do in our practice. What we developed is based on a
technology of wound healing material called extracellular matrix. When combined with platelet-rich
plasma, it was discovered in our development that doing hair transplant surgery, thinning
hairs actually became thicker. We were able to help the grafts survive better. We were
also able to help the donor area heal better but what’s different from PRP alone is that
we are able to do a single injection treatment and see significant improvement over the course
of a year to 18 months. We follow our patients every 3 months and we document extensively
using a digital microscopy as well as digital photography to document the improvement. We
sometimes also do a second injection at the 12-18th month point to further enhance and
build upon. It’s not like the treatment regresses but we are actually able to improve
upon that.
With more than 5 years of data, we have been able to at least clinically verify that the
treatment is sustainable and that the hair growth continues without constant injection.
I think that’s a big differentiator from either PRP or mesotherapy. Usually there’s
some type of continuous, within a year, several injections necessary to sustain the results.
Again, these other treatments, these PRP and mesotherapy won’t stop progression. With
Hair Regeneration, we are able to show over and over for patients who we treat from around
the world that we are able to stop progression, reverse thinning and thicken existing thinning
hairs.
So I realized that you asked a different question but it was important for you to at least get
some perspective since you are obviously looking for a non-surgical alternative to hair transplant
that there is also this other treatment that is an injection called Hair Regeneration.
So learn more about this option. With no intention to confuse you rather to educate you, I want
you to learn and do more research so that you feel comfortable about your knowledge
and the understanding of what the long-term plan is. You know it’s very important that
when people have hair loss, they’re often desperate and they’ll try anything and I
mean anything. So it’s better to at least take a step back from the desperation and
think about the long-term plan and think in terms of years and decades and not short term
solutions even though that is all you may find when you just learn about just PRP and
mesotherapy. So now you have a third alternative that I think will make a bigger difference
for you.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!