what's an alternative treatment to surgical hair transplants
when you go online and search for a solution for hair loss
you are often flooded and then stalked by
ads from hair transplant clinics for a long time a certain percentage of
people were resigned to pursue a hair transplant because
there was no other alternative fortunately as a byproduct of my trying
to improve the outcomes of my hair transplant surgeries i developed
a non-surgical alternative to hair
transplant which has been very successful for over
10 years i'll discuss my perspective on this
alternative approach which can for most of my patients
actually exceed the results of hair transplantation
I'm Dr Amiya Prasad I'm a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and
Fellowship-trained oculofacial plastic and reconstructive
surgeon I've been in practice in New York City
and Long Island for over 25 years for many years
hair transplant surgery was amongst the most popular procedures
i performed in my practice as a cosmetic surgeon i was
used to a high rate of satisfaction for my facial and
body cosmetic procedures and at the same time i was
frustrated with getting consistent results
and having comparable satisfaction with hair
transplant surgery the two areas that i wanted to focus attention on was to
optimize hair graft survival so the yield would improve
and to get better healing of the donor area
where the strips of hair bearing skin was harvested
in an effort to achieve this i applied extracellular matrix by ACell
with prp at the time of surgery i recognized that in addition to
improved graft yield and donor area healing
that thinning hair became thicker i focused my attention and resources to
determine how to optimally dose and deliver this
material for different types of hair loss for
both men and women this work took many years and
ultimately i was able to achieve consistent results for both men and
women with androgenetic alopecia and created
TrichoStem Hair Regeneration with only one to two treatment sessions
we've been helping people from around the world improve their
appearance and their confidence with over 99 percent success
many of my patients who were considering hair transplant surgery
prior did not feel that they needed surgery after
having TrichoStem Hair Regeneration treatment
there is no question that TrichoStem Hair Regeneration
is now the industry benchmark for ACell and prp treatments which seem to
appear on mass many years after we developed
our treatment i often see people who professionally speaking were not ideal
candidates for hair transplant surgery and yet they
underwent not just one but several
hair transplant procedures these patients perceived that their
only option was to undergo hair transplant surgery
unfortunately they fell victim to the aggressive salesmanship of hair
transplant factories both in this country
and for considerably lower cost internationally there are two groups of
people who in my opinion with limited exception should not have
hair transplant surgery one group is men in their 20s and the
other is women who typically have a diffuse
hair thinning pattern when estimating the
incidence of hair loss in men we use a general rule of thumb
called the Rule of Decades for example if you are in your 20s about 20 percent
of your contemporaries have hair loss while 80 percent don't if you're in your
50s you are probably aware that 50 or more of your contemporaries have hair
loss essentially the age of onset and the
rate of hair loss needs to be factored when considering a
treatment strategy that involves hair transplant surgery the source
for hair for transplantation is the limited
donor area in the back of the scalp a younger man who undergoes hair
transplant will continue to lose hair at a much
faster rate by the nature of their type of hair loss
in comparison to a middle-aged man with the same level of hair loss this
means that the donor area will run out sooner if the transplantation is
performed repeatedly to keep up with the ongoing hair loss
it's also important to understand that the aesthetic expectations
are different for a younger man in comparison to a middle aged man
this means that regardless of the amount of surgery performed on a younger man
who is suffering from moderate to advanced hair loss
it is unlikely that they will achieve density and coverage
comparable to the 80 percent of their peer group
unfortunately a lot of men who choose to have
several transplants beginning in their 20s
often regret having had these surgeries when they are in their
mid to late 30s this is because they continue to
lose their hair and the remaining hair they have
is transplanted hair she doesn't have good density and
doesn't look very natural i treat a lot of women with hair loss in my practice
this type of hair loss is referred to as female pattern hair loss
and is also called androgenetic alopecia this type of hair loss is characterized
by diffuse thinning with no areas of smooth
non-hair-bearing skin hair transplant surgery has the potential of making hair
loss in women worse because of the loss of
existing hairs as a consequence of trauma caused by the
incisions made for implanting hair grafts the term
for this is often called collateral damage
this is why i generally don't recommend hair transplant for most of my female
pattern hair loss patients for these two groups of hair loss
patients a hair transplant alternative is
really necessary as i stated earlier the TrichoStem Hair Regeneration treatment
can be administered without the risks of exhausting the
donor hair and causing collateral hair loss i also
want to make clear that trichostem hair regeneration is not
just about the injection treatment but rather it's about a treatment strategy
when i meet a patient i develop a customized treatment plan with
modalities to optimize hair growth these modalities
can include pharmaceuticals topicals nutritional
supplementation and hormonal therapy TrichoStem Hair Regeneration increases
the number of visible hairs on the scalp by reactivating hair that is not growing
and thickening thinning hair resulting in significant
improvement of scalp coverage this phenomena is very important to
consider when you understand the technical limitations
of hair transplant surgery your existing native hair even when it's thinning
can be as dense as 50 hairs per square centimeter
when you undergo hair transplantation you can only get about 20 hairs per
square centimeter this is because the ability of the skin
to heal with multiple incisions for hair grafts
is limited by the structural integrity of your skin
and the limitations of blood supply if you place too many grafts
the skin falls apart and the hair grafts simply don't survive
it's for this reason that many patients who have had hair transplant surgery
are dissatisfied with how unnatural their grafts appear
in terms of density and they are resigned to undergo another
surgery hoping to improve their density this means they are paying twice and
further depleting their donor area regardless of whether you're undergoing
FUT or FUE surgery the donor area is a
limited supply of hair grafts in order to achieve
density that looks natural you need a lot more than the number of grafts you
can maximally harvest from the back of the scalp it's simply a
surface area mismatch the top of the scalp is a lot larger
than the limited area of hair bearing skin that is genetically
resistant to hair loss by increasing the number of hairs and
thickening existing thinning hairs which are naturally at a
much higher density than can be achieved with a hair
transplant hair regeneration can achieve very
effective coverage without surgery although the marketing
of hair transplants seems so alluring
essentially hair transplantation is moving hair from one
location to another unfortunately there is a
certain percentage sometimes as high as 90 percent of hairs
which don't survive being moved from one location to another
further as mentioned earlier collateral damage to existing hairs
in the recipient area results in significant loss
of potential density and coverage in spite of transplantation
the popular procedure of follicular unit extraction or
fue has what's known as a transection rate
transection means that when the hair graft is harvested
a certain percentage typically 30 percent of hairs
do not have the root or follicle necessary for growth when
implanted this means that 30 of the grafts are not going to grow in
addition there is a percentage of grafts that are intact
which don't survive i see so many patients every week who have had
three hair transplants and are frustrated and disheartened by this type
of experience since they're no longer able to have any
more surgery they need a new approach to their
situation typically i find that i can help them
improve the appearance of their hair grafts
as well as the few native hairs remaining
with TrichoStem Hair Regeneration in fact i've helped many people with old
hair transplants by not only improving the quality of
their transplanted hair but also by reactivating hair that was
transplanted and simply not growing it's important to understand that hair
transplant surgery is very traumatic to the scalp if you just
think about a surgery where you have 1500 to 2500 stabs on the scalp
you can imagine how there can be vascular compromise and scar tissue
resulting in a sub-optimal environment for hair growth
by using acellular matrix and platelet-rich plasma
i believe i'm creating a better environment
by optimizing blood supply and recruiting your adult stem cells
into the deeper layers of skin where the hair follicles are
it's important to recognize that particularly with procedures like
fue hair is being harvested from areas outside the true permanent zone
this means that these grafts are subject to thinning
just like the hairs that have been lost from the top of the scalp
after all this does it mean that there's never a situation where a hair
transplant would be indicated of course not
there are cases of advanced hair loss particularly
frontal hair loss where there are no more
viable hair follicles to treat non-surgically
typically the same patient who would benefit from transplantation to the
frontal area also has some hair in the mid scalp
and behind in the crown recalling that hair transplant is still
very limited by the number of hairs that can
be successfully transplanted in the
limitations of achieving natural density a strategy can be employed where optimal
coverage can be achieved maximally before the patient undergoes
hair transplant surgery as has been seen
by looking at celebrities who had obvious hair transplants which everyone
identifies as such it's important to recognize
that the frontal hairline is defined by natural density
with the transition behind the hairline as opposed to isolated grafts in a line
comparable to a picket fence so the strategy that i recommend
is to undergo TrichoStem Hair Regeneration
first to maximize coverage before undergoing hair transplantation
simply stated every hair that we are able to
regrow and improve scalp coverage allows the hair transplant surgeon
to focus the limited number of grafts to smaller surface areas we've also helped
many patients who underwent hair transplant and then discovered
trichostem hair regeneration while they were online
i found that patients who have undergone hair transplant surgery can
benefit in terms of optimizing the hair graft growth as well as
their native hair growth i often joke with them that at the one year point
after surgery the surgeon who performed their transplant
will want to take credit for how good they look because of the improved
density achieved with TrichoStem Hair
Regeneration that's okay with me in conclusion
although the marketing of hair transplant surgery creates the
perception that the only way to address significant
hair loss is to have a hair transplant we have
proven for over 10 years that a non-surgical treatment such as
TrichoStem Hair Regeneration can not only be comparable but actually
yield results that exceed not only one but two hair transplant surgeries
in a marketplace driven by transaction and profit
there's often little attention paid to the long term consequences
of any aesthetic intervention whether it's a laser treatment
cosmetic surgery or hair transplant a patient with hair loss is different
and compared to a patient who is interested in trying botox
for the first time hair loss has a significant
emotional impact and i feel that people who
come to me with hair loss need an honest opinion and a treatment strategy
not a transaction i hope you found this information helpful
thank you for your question
you