Thank you for your question. You’re 22-years-old, you submitted photos of the top of your scalp
as well as an image of what appears to be microscopic photos probably of yours during
an evaluation and stating that you have hair loss and that you are unable to get any assistance
in your country. Well, certainly I can give you some guidance
with how we deal with patients like yourself who come to us. 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
and I am the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers. This is a technology
we developed in our practice based on wound healing material we were using for hair transplant.
It is a non-surgical solution and we are able to help both men and women with pattern hair
loss, genetic pattern hair loss. The success rate being over 99% and patients come to us
from all over the world. So we have a lot of experience with situations like yours.
So to begin with, when someone young has a history of hair loss, we evaluate first to
see if there is any family history. We have recently treated a woman who is 16, a young
woman and she came with her mother who had exactly the same pattern of loss and progression
similarly and so there was a very strong, direct family history. Now when there is a
question about whether or not there is a family history or whether there is a genetic pattern,
we will do something called biopsy where we take samples of the skin in 3 different areas
and we send the tissue to a university pathology lab to establish whether or not this is androgenetic
or genetic pattern hair loss or whether it is inflammatory or scarring hair loss. It
is important for women to also have an evaluation with an endocrinologist or medical doctor
whether it is your OB-GYN or your internist to at least have hormonal levels, iron levels,
basically other causes of hair loss eliminated before undergoing treatment.
That being said, it is becoming clear that a larger group of younger people, both men
and women, have genetic pattern loss at a very young age. What we have learned with
Hair Regeneration and again what we do is we use this combination of Acellular matrix
and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) as well as other elements. And this is a treatment, an
injection treatment and it is usually a one-time treatment. Sometimes the treatment is done
twice over the course of 15-18 months after the initial treatment but essentially, we’re
able to stop progression, we’re able to reactivate hair that is not growing that is
on a telogen phase as well as induce the shedding of thinning hair and the growth of thicker
hairs. Like the photos you submitted of your scalp, both from the top as well as microscopically,
we do regular microscopic and standardized digital photography to establish what the
status is at any given time frame.
Now when people come from outside of our immediate area and we get a lot of people from around
the world, we try to get people back in at certain points but obviously we can’t see
them as often as we can, someone who lives in the tri-state area but I can tell you that
one of the things that we clearly established over the many years of doing this treatment
is that the earlier we catch someone, the better it is. There are people who start with
hair loss very young like a male who’s 16 or 17-years-old and they can be bald by the
time they are 22. The earlier we catch someone, the better it is and the more salvageable
hair follicles we have to work with.
So I think that since you are trying to learn about options outside your immediate area,
you can learn about Hair Regeneration and about the technology that we developed and
certainly it is important for you to first establish the medical basis for your hair
loss. You don’t want to use a treatment for one thing when you actually have something
else. So establish that it is not hormonal or metabolic or nutritional and also establish
maybe through a dermatologist that it’s not inflammatory or autoimmune. Now of course
those types of conditions account for 5%. 95% of hair loss of men and women is genetic
pattern loss and unfortunately, the medical literature doesn’t have that much information
about this and I suspect mainly because there weren’t that many options until now.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.