Thank you for your question.
You’ve asked a question where you want to know how effective is PRP therapy for hair
fall or hair thinning.
Well, I can definitely help you with this question.
I'm a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon certified by the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery,
and a Fellowship-trained oculofacial plastic surgeon practicing in Manhattan and Long Island
for over 20 years.
I'm also the founder of Trichostem Hair Regeneration centers, and have been very active in the
technology and use of PRP as an alternative for hair loss.
So I'll give you my personal experience, and in no way do I intend to disparage other physicians.
To understand hair loss, you have to begin with essentially the most common cause of
hair loss, which is male or female pattern hair loss, or genetic hair loss or hair thinning.
The drugs that are currently available in the United States are minoxidil and finasteride,
and without going into detail, we're going to discuss a little bit about the alternative
therapies.
For many years, it was observed that when you injected the scalp with platelet rich
plasma, it appeared to stimulate hair growth.
So there's no question that there is some effect on the scalp, on hair growth, with
platelet rich plasma.
What we've developed in our practice is a technology using platelet rich plasma called
Hair Regeneration.
Hair Regeneration is combining platelet rich plasma with extracellular matrix.
Extracellular matrix is derived from a tissue that is intended for wound-healing.
Well it happened to be the case that a side effect of the wound-healing benefit of extracellular
matrix, when used during hair transplants, appeared to be hair thickening.
So what we observed was that, although PRP can stimulate hair growth, it doesn't stop
hair loss or hair thinning.
So you could technically keep getting PRP injections, but you won't stop the hair from
falling out eventually.
With Hair Regeneration, what we've developed is a formulation and a method to deliver this
combination so that hair loss stops, and not only does the progression stop, but thinning
hair actually becomes thicker.
So it's actually a reversal of the thinning process.
Now it doesn't work 100% to the point where you get back all of your hair, but it does
work very effectively for more than 99% of male pattern hair loss patients that we've
treated.
We’ve treated people coming from around the world, and we have two offices in New
York, one in Garden City, Long Island and one in Manhattan, and we have centers that
we are setting up outside of this area and we're seeing consistently great results with
this treatment.
The key is of course is that the earlier we catch somebody, the better it is.
Now there are going to be people who it doesn't work on, there are going to be people who
still lose hair in spite of the intervention, but with male pattern hair loss, our statistics
do hold up that 99% of the patients that we treat do respond and do very well.
We even do additional injections based on customized monitoring and approach that will
even further improve the results.
So I think that the answer to the question is, is that PRP doesn't stop hair loss.
It is in some ways comparable to the effect of Rogaine or minoxidil and cause hair to
appear a little thicker because it can short-term stimulate hair growth.
We have seen many patients who have had PRP injections performed by doctors in other facilities,
and they say that they went and got the injection every month, and interestingly, there was
no documentation as to the benefit.
So I think a lot of people who do perform it feel like they're trying to do something
to help their patients, but understand that it does have its limitations.
So from my perspective, we would not use PRP alone for hair loss.
We would use it in combination with our method called Hair Regeneration.
So I think that you should investigate this methodology and this technology, because in
this world of regenerative medicine, this wound-healing technology has actually become
such a game changer for us in our practice, where we used to do a lot of hair transplants,
because of majority of men who came for consultation for transplants where men who has any hair.
It was not bald men it was men with thinning hair.
When we see people with thinning hair, and we treat them with Hair Regeneration, we actually
found that we get better results with salvaging and thickening the existing thinning hair,
than we would by doing a transplant.
Of course there are going to be exceptions, but the general rule based on the certain
level of density of the existing hair, the results can be quite impressive.
Because once you stop the progression of hair loss, if those hairs got to be thicker, then
it appears that the majority of our patients end up in a place where they're comfortable
and it makes a lot of sense, because if you bring them back to where they were a few years
ago, then most of the time they're pretty satisfied with that result.
So I hope that was helpful and I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you for your question.