Thank you for your question. You state in your question that you had receding hairline
and that you’ve been using minoxidil which had benefits for you and you are asking if
platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and Acellular matrix can help your receding hairline since in your
perception, the hairs have only been dormant for about 1 year.
Well, I can certainly give you some guidance on this question. I’m a board certified
cosmetic surgeon and fellowship trained oculofacial plastic and reconstructive surgeon practicing
in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years. Hair Transplant and non-surgical hair loss
treatment has been a significant part of my practice. And in fact, I am the founder of
TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers and have developed a system for treating hair
loss non-surgically and we refer to as Hair Regeneration and this does involve the use
of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and Acellular matrix.
So to give you perspective about your process and our experience, and we treat patients
with hair loss both men and women with 99% success rate for pattern loss from people
who come to us from all over the world. And we have many years of data and this is the
basis to our approach for this treatment. I think you are on the right track and that
you are aware that the longer the hair is gone, the less likely that it is salvageable.
Physiologically, hair thinning and hair loss can occur basically in 1 or 2 ways just through
observation. One is progressive thinning which means the hair grows, sheds, comes back later
and comes back thinner then sheds. That’s why it is called thinning process but there
are other variations. We see where the hair grows, sheds and just never comes back. So
you are probably on the right track if you observed thinning that there are probably
a lot of hairs that are not necessary dormant but rather they are just not growing the way
they used to.
What happens with hair loss, if we think about the physiology of hair straightforward, there
are 3 phases: First is called anagen which is the active growing phase. The second is
catagen which is the transition phase and then third is telogen which is the resting
phase. What happens to pattern hair loss men and women, male and female is that the anagen
phase gets shorter, the telogen phase gets longer and is certainly acceptable to refer
to as dormant but rather it is just not re-growing. And if it’s going to re-grow, it will grow
back thinner.
With Hair Regeneration, we have learned over the many years of doing this is that the earlier
we catch someone and the more follicles we can actually treat, the better it is. If someone
comes to us who is bald, it is already too late and they don’t have viable hair follicles.
But if someone comes to us with any hair, then we can make a real impact. This has lead
into an advocacy to advise patients to continue to monitor and to look. For prospective patients,
I should say to come when you notice hair loss. The earlier we treat someone, the better
it is. We’ve learned from treating people who are middle-aged and older to now middle-age
to considerably younger groups of patients. And in fact, our youngest patient, we’ve
treated for male pattern hair loss is 17-18 years old male and even women starting to
come in who are in their 20’s. And with biopsy, we’ve been able to establish them
having androgenetic alopecia or pattern hair loss. So the earlier we can treat someone,
the better it is.
So I think that to answer to your question, is that it is highly likely that you will
see benefit in the frontotemporal is where you are seeing recession. The longer you wait,
the less hair there is to work with and I think that you can also look for a solution
where there is monitoring.
One of the things I have observed for patients who come to us who have been on, let’s say
minoxidil, they have been on minoxidil for 20-25 years and yet they continuously went
to lose all their hair. From my perspective, drugs like minoxidil has value and that it
does prolong the growth cycles of thinner hair and have some degree of stimulatory effect
on hairs that are not actively growing but it does not stop the progression. With Hair
Regeneration, we’ve been able to prove successfully the consistency. We are able to stop the progression,
in other words, stop the progressive process of hair loss. We are able to restore or reactivate
hair that hasn’t been growing and any hair that is thinning that after a shed, will grow
in thicker. So you can imagine that we’ve been very successful with this and it has
essentially displaced hair transplant from many potential people who come to us considering
hair transplant. The more hair you start, the better it is.
So look for a specialist who can offer this type of solution. Learn about the option.
Learn about their experience and I think that one of the challenges in developing this system
was that we had to figure out a lot of different variables that contribute to the best outcome
based on gender, age of onset, relative progression, relative severity and other variables that
are used in my process and ultimately we now are able to customize individuals to help
them get the maximum benefit.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!