Thank you for your question. You’re basically asking about platelet-rich
plasma (PRP) versus transplants and hair loss treatments and you submitted several photos
and your question really expresses very well the frustration that you and many people have
when it comes to trying to find the, as you would describe, the most qualified doctor
to help you with your hair loss. And you state also in your question that treatments for
hair loss are expensive, dermatologists are expensive and you’re in a situation where
you say that 3-4 years ago, you started losing hair and whatever hair you have on your scalp
is also grey which is a separate issue and you are looking for probably the most cost-effective
approach for treating hair loss.
Well, I can certainly help you understand a little bit of a general perspective on how
hair loss is treated. A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and
Fellowship-trained oculofacial plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I’ve been in practice
in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years. I am also the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair
Regeneration centers, a system that we developed from the procedures that we used to do a lot
with hair transplant surgery and it’s a non-surgical approach to hair loss for many
people like yourself who come to us from around the world using stem cell based wound healing
technology to treat men and women with thinning hair.
So first just to give you an understanding of why there is a challenge of finding the
right doctor for your problem or anyone’s problem with hair loss, the basic issue is
first establishing the correct diagnosis. Now, fortunately common things happen commonly
and 95% of hair loss is genetic pattern inherited hair loss and referred to as androgenetic
alopecia and this applies to both men and women.
Now, in the universe of options for treatment, the treatments are relatively narrow and small
in number and so if you were to start your journey with finding a physician such as a
dermatologist, you would at least get the important information you need to establish
the diagnosis and understand that treatment for hair loss or for anything that falls in
the world of aesthetics is going to be expensive. There is no getting around it and seeking
opinions from doctors is unfortunately, you are not going to necessarily always land on
the right doctor for you on day one with the first appointment. There is a challenge there
and it is about finding the right fit for you and finding the right doctor and it doesn’t
necessarily, it’s not necessarily specialty specific. Everyone comes to hair loss from
a perspective that works for them and so if you were to reach out to a hair transplant
doctor, well there is a very good chance the hair transplant doctor, not necessarily saying
they are 100% biased but because their solutions are predominantly surgical, they will likely
discuss with you the option of transplant surgery. They will also probably discuss with
you the options for hair loss stabilization.
So basically, I will tell you how I counsel my patients and I can say to you that from
my perspective, there are essentially medical treatments, surgical treatments and then there
is the treatment that we developed called Hair Regeneration and this is not intended
to sell you on the idea of just one solution or one particular option. But understand that
what you are dealing with, from the photos you submitted, I think it’s a fairly aggressive
pattern of hair loss that looks like androgenetic alopecia and that means that it is male pattern
hair loss and if it only started 3-4 years ago, you are losing hair at a very rapid pace.
And my approach to someone like yourself would be is to inform you about the options of medical
therapies such as minoxidil which you probably know about, the topical application and as
well as finasteride which is a DHT (dihydrotestosterone) blocker which can help up to 60% of men who
in terms of slowing the progression, it’s not used for women.
Now that being said, unfortunately a lot of men who come to our practice are reluctant
to choose to take finasteride because they are afraid of reading about the potential
long-term sexual side effects. Clinically speaking, I disagree with the perception of
it being common when in my practice and in the practices of many of my colleagues who
I speak to, it is very rare to have, no one I know can actually remember any patient who
had a long-term side effect. So in my experience, if someone were to have a side-effect from
finasteride such as decreased libido, we stop the drug and they’re back to their normal
baseline.
So having done transplants for many years, we used to do an average of 3-5 transplants
per week, we were trying to develop a solution to help the transplants heal better and that
solution was to use a material called Acellular matrix which is a wound healing material that
uses stem cell activity using adult stem cells from your own body to help improve wound healing
and that was with the intention of healing grafts better as well as the donor area, the
strip, the back of the scalp where we harvest the grafts. Thinning hairs started to get
thicker in certain patients and so we developed over the course of several years a predictable
way or consistent way to use an injection and we developed and we call it Hair Regeneration.
Basically it is a combination of Acellular matrix and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) put
together in a very specific way which I inject at different levels of the skin to actually
stop the progression of hair loss, to reactivate hair that is not growing, to induce the shed
of thinning hair so that thicker hair grow in. Now often people say that this sounds
much too good to be true and I can understand their skepticism but we have over 5-7 years
of data showing stability and effectiveness and these results we’ve been able to establish,
occurred from just having one injection.
Now, I always customize these treatments and so patients who have more moderate to severe
hair loss, I find that if I do another injection, I’m actually strengthening further fine
hairs that were literally rescued from near death and those hairs get thicker when I treat
people somewhere around 15-18 months and they get even more coverage. It’s been such a
successful solution as an alternative to hair transplant surgery that patients are coming
to us from all over the world and my patient coordinators become kind of like an air traffic
controller. So it’s essentially important that I think that timing for you is critical
and I would say that in a situation like yours, I would want you to do medical therapy and
Hair Regeneration treatment before considering hair transplant surgery.
Now again, to go back to answering your question: what you should look for? I think that you
are going to have to do a lot of research and you have to find the solution or the physician
that you feel like you can trust in terms of being able to discuss with them your concerns,
your budget and what options are available. And unfortunately, time is not on your side.
With this much advanced hair loss and once the hair is gone and this is the limitation
of Hair Regeneration treatment is limited to the inventory of salvageable follicles
and I would say that the earlier we treat someone, the better it is. Our youngest male
patient to date is 17 and our youngest female patient is 16. So genetic pattern loss can
affect people at a very young age.
In terms of cost effectiveness and you’re concerned about the cost in general, when
I developed this, I developed it in a way so that it would be as accessible as possible
and I think that Hair Regeneration has been a significant cost savings for many patients
who would otherwise have considered going for hair transplant. And not only do people
who needed hair transplant get one but generally they need multiple transplants because they
continue to lose hair especially if they’re not on any medical therapy to stabilize their
hair loss so that’s an important factor to include in how you are calculating things.
But again I would say, don’t be afraid to spend some money to meet with doctors. You
are dealing with professionals who can help you and if hair is important to you or anything
else is important, you have to put in both time and money to find the right resources.
I don’t think anyone would ever say that there is only one solution for everybody and
everyone should go to the same place.
So that being said consider what I’ve discussed with regards to your question and then move
forward on your journey, take a first step before you lose more hair.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.