Thank you for your question. You're 20 years old and you’ve submitted a lot of photos
and that this – that’s absolutely great and it’s very helpful. You’re describing
your narrative and your question that you’ve been thinning since you’re 18 and you're
concerned that you may have male-pattern hair loss. And certainly you're – you’ve been
doing research and you're asking about the effectiveness of platelet-rich plasma or PRP
in the treatment of hair loss. Well, I can certainly give you opinion from my experience.
I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon and I’ve been performing hair transplant surgery
for over 20 years in Manhattan and Long Island. I’m also the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair
Regeneration centers which is a system of non-surgical hair loss treatment that does
involve the use of platelet-rich plasma. I also have a lot of experience using platelet-rich
plasma because as a cosmetic surgeon, I also use it for skin rejuvenation, scar treatment,
and wound healing. So that being said, let’s start with your
question about male-pattern hair loss. Now, before I comment, I will say that I don’t,
in any way, mean and intend to disparage any other doctor who is using platelet-rich plasma
as a modality for hair loss treatment. I’m speaking only from my experience and I want
that to be clear. As physicians, we often do the best we can with the information and
experience that we have. That’s why it’s not – there’s no such thing as cookbook
medicine. There is so much that comes from experience. So that being point out there
first, I’ll explain to you what my experience has been.
Platelet-rich plasma is derived in our field from the work done by oral surgeons who first
used platelet-rich plasma for the improvement of healing for dental implants. In addition,
it went then further into orthopedic surgery. And then beyond that, it’s being applied
in our field in cosmetic surgery for a variety of treatments. In our practice, we use platelet-rich
plasma everyday. We use it for improvement of dark under eye circles. We use it for skin
texture and quality improvement. We use it for acne scars. We use it for scar revision.
We love using platelet-rich plasma and anyone in my practice who is over the age of 35,
we all get platelet-rich plasma every few months.
So it’s certainly has a lot of value. But in my observations of its use in hair, what
I found out was that in transplant surgery, it does have value in improving the healing
process. But in terms of hair loss, it can short term stimulate growth but it will not
stop progression. When you think about hair loss, you have to understand that it’s – for
95 percent of men and women with pattern hair loss, it’s genetic. Very often people think
about nutritional and other issues, but when you get down to it, genetics is the strongest
factor. It’s hard wired programming for the hair to grow and at a certain point, to
just stop growing. Now for men, there is actually one unique
factor that has been known since the late 90’s called DHT or Dihydrotestosterone which
is the basis for the drug Finasteride which can be effective in estimated over 60 percent
of men. But DHT is not the whole story and we have learned that serendipitously in our
practice, when we started using this combination of extracellular matrix of platelet-rich plasma.
Extracellular matrix is a wound-healing material which was originally intended for the improvement
of hair graph survival, as well as for donor area survival – or donor area healing, I
should say. What was found serendipitously is that thinning
hair became thicker. What we’ve done in our practice for the past several years is
develop a method of delivery, dosing, and timing of combining extracellular matrix with
platelet-rich plasma to the point where we can do one injection and significantly improve
thinning hair in male and female pattern hair loss. What we’ve further developed is a
secondary process where we made additional – do additional injections which we customize
to each individual patient. But that’s in sharp contrast to what is typical based on
the feedback we get from patients who come to us after seeing other doctors is platelet-rich
plasma treatment is – generally is a treatment that’s done on a monthly basis. And the
frustration that people have is that they don’t see significant improvement. And many
patients have come to us who were doing it for years. So it’s not like they were impatient.
They were – they stayed with the course but they kept – they didn’t see thickening
of their hair. They would see short hair’s growths, maybe they’ll see the slight improvement.
But in my opinion, and my – from my perspective, it can – it can stimulate very fine hairs
to grow which you really can’t see that well with the naked eye and it may prolong
the growth cycle of a thinning hair. With hair regeneration, we actually stop the progression
of hair loss. People will report that they stopped shedding. People will report that
their hair feels stronger. And then, of course, the photos of our patients before and after
treatment speak for themselves. There is dramatic improvement in a lot of
people. In fact, we’ve estimated that in the right candidate, hair regeneration can
actually create results that actually exceed the results of two hair transplants. And that’s
simply based on the mathematics of the coverage of hair. If hair is already – has a – is
naturally has a density; and if those hairs become thicker, well nature is already – is
much better than any surgeon at creating density. So if the programming on the hair is somehow
disruptive – disrupted to stop thinning and instead go the other way and become thicker,
the results can be really, really impressive. So that’s why when – in our practice,
we don’t use PRP alone for hair loss, we use PRP in combination with extracellular
matrix with our protocol which we call hair regeneration and TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration.
So with that being said, I think you should learn more about your options. You're young,
you have a few options in front of you. I’m sure you’ve done a lot of research. But
I think you need to meet with doctors to get some ideas of what the best options are for
you. But I would say – suggest that you not choose PRP as a standalone treatment because
I’m – I don’t think you will get what you're looking for. You may prolong the growth
cycle a little bit but you're not going to stop the progression.
So I hope that was helpful. I wish you the best of luck. Thank you for your question.