Thank you
for your question. You’ve submitted 2 photos and you are asking
will platelet-rich plasma (PRP) recover your hair loss in your temples and you’ve stated
that you’ve been losing hair and you’ve been using minoxidil for about 2 and half
years. And currently, you’ve completed 3 sessions of what will be a 10 weekly session
process of getting platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections. So naturally, I think that it’s
understandable that you want to know if this will actually work.
Well, I can certainly give you my perspective. 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’m also the founder
of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers. This is as technology we developed in our
practice while doing hair transplants which uses platelet-rich plasma (PRP) as well as
Acellular matrix which I will discuss further as a non-surgical treatment that has been
significant and has changed the way we practice in helping people with hair loss.
So, I’ll share with you my experience with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) as it relates to
hair loss. Now to begin with, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a concentration of wound healing
growth factors that are naturally in your blood and they stimulate collagen, they stimulate
blood supply. They have a lot of different factors that when concentrated, have shown
to have a stimulatory effect for hair follicles. Now that being said and these have been actually
documented in dermatologic literature to help certainly validate the use of platelet-rich
plasma (PRP). In our practice, we use platelet-rich plasma (PRP) a lot. We use it for skin rejuvenation,
we use it for wrinkles, we use it for under eye dark circles, we use it for acne scars.
We use platelet-rich plasma (PRP) a lot. But when it comes to hair loss, the experience
that we’ve had is that platelet-rich plasma (PRP) will stimulate hair growth but it will
not stop the progression of hair loss and it’s a very important element to your plan
because in my experience, people have come to us getting platelet-rich plasma (PRP) done
elsewhere, they’ve done it once a month. And by the 4th month, they were not sure whether
or not they were going anywhere. There have been others who recommend doing it every 3
months and I think that a lot of my colleagues are developing their own approach based on
their clinical experience and I think why it varies has to do a lot with the stage of
the growth cycle and whether or not the resting stage or telogen stage of hair is actually
being responsive to the injection. So from my perspective, a weekly platelet-rich plasma
(PRP) injection seems very aggressive.
Physiologically speaking, just on the wound healing concept and the actual physiology
of wound healing, it seems like you’re creating new wounds by just entering the tissue space
or the skin and it might be disrupting what’s going on. Now, that in no way means that your
doctor doesn’t have a valid explanation of why they’re recommending weekly treatments.
One thing about clinical medicine that should always be respected is that each individual
physician is making a decision to guide you on what’s best for you based on their experiences.
This is the art of clinical medicine.
Now that being said, I want to introduce you to a little bit about what we developed in
our practice which is relevant because we use platelet-rich plasma (PRP). We were first
trying to help hair transplant patients heal better so we are using platelet-rich plasma
(PRP). We then were using platelet-rich plasma (PRP) with something called Acellular matrix.
This is a wound healing technology that takes the regenerative medicine capacity of PRP
to a very different level. It is not like getting very highly concentrated platelet-rich
plasma (PRP) which a lot of people are trying to improve the concentration of platelets
but rather there is a certain behavior that is unique to extracellular matrix and what
it does is it heals by duplication of cells. So when placed on muscle cells, it heals with
muscle instead of scar tissue. On skin, when I use for it facelifts or any other cosmetic
surgical procedure, I find that the healing is accelerated and the appearance is remarkable.
Now what we ultimately developed was a protocol based on an observation and the observation
was that thinning hair started to look thicker in different patients when we are combining
platelet-rich plasma (PRP) with Acellular matrix for the purpose of healing the donor
area of the hair transplant patient as well as the hair grafts themselves. Long story
short, we developed protocol and that now has been successfully consistent for 99% of
men and women with genetic pattern hair loss, androgenic alopecia. With Hair Regeneration,
we are able to stop progression, reactivate hair that is not growing which is basically
in the resting phase which is prolonged when hair is thinning as well as induce the shed
of thinning hair and the growth of thicker hair. Again, with many years of data, in fact,
over 5 years of data, we’ve not seen any significant trend of regression.
So to contrast Hair Regeneration with what you are going through, it really is no comparison.
We do a single injection and we are able to get consistently five years of successful
improvement of hair loss. We’ve developed even further, so for people with moderate
to severe hair loss, we do something called a booster injection which is around 15 months
later. So it’s really a very different model even though we are using platelet-rich plasma
(PRP). So, I think you need certainly ask your doctor and I’m sure your doctor probably
said to you that they’re going to do their best and see if you get any growth and it
depends a lot on the salvageability of the hair follicles. Again, for me, a weekly injection
of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) doesn’t seem to make sense for when you think of the physiology
of wound healing. But your doctor may have a protocol and I’m sure you looked at before
and after pictures and other things but the question really ultimately is how long can
you really keep doing this? Going for injections in the scalp once a week for 10 weeks may
be fine but how long can you do that and keep doing that again for another 10 weeks?
My observation has been that platelet-rich plasma (PRP) can stimulate hair growth but
it cannot stimulate sustained hair growth. So I think this is an opportunity for you
to learn more about the technology behind Hair Regeneration in our experience and you
can then at least compare and contrast your options and certainly discuss the feasibility
and when should you expect results. When we talk to our patients about Hair Regeneration,
we have treated so many people from around the world and we have so much data that we
collect and we follow our patients every 3 months, that we are able to give them very
specific information about the scenarios and how they can play out and then we follow up
with each patient and take very specific photos, microscope photos, etc. to be able to document
their improvement.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.