Thank you for your question.
You're asking for the purposes of treatment of hair loss, “How long does PRP treatment
last?”
Well, I can certainly help you with this question.
I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon practicing in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years.
I've been performing hair transplant and I use PRP a lot in my practice.
I'm also the founder of TrichoStem Hair Regeneration Center which is a method that we’ve developed
for non-surgical treatment of hair loss but typically hair thinning using PRP and a material
called ACell or extracellular matrix.
So I can certainly give you my perspective based on my experience.
I always have to qualify with this statement because I don’t want anyone to feel that
I'm disparaging any other physicians for how they treat hair loss.
You know I think that as physicians we do our best to help our patients and if there’s
something like PRP available and it’s been shown to have some value with hair loss treatment,
by all means, I certainly understand why doctors are doing this.
It’s a very difficult question to answer because when we have developed this treatment
of using PRP and extracellular matrix, we’ve learned how hair loss is very individual.
There are several chromosomes – everybody that is associated with hair loss, the expression
of those chromosomes and the genetics of that hair loss clearly is variable.
Some people start – for men, the people – some people start as young as 17 to 18
and by the time they’re 22, they’re bald.
Other people will start somewhere around 19, 20 and it may – they may take them 20 to
30 years to lose a significant amount of hair.
So when you think about it, when you – when you ask a type of question, you're going to
get a lot of different answers.
In my – from my experience, PRP stimulates hair growth.
And we use PRP for a lot of things.
We use it for skin rejuvenation.
We use it for scar treatments.
We use it for just an improvement of a lot of areas like under eye dark circles.
It just – it’s a great method of treatment and it’s one that a lot of physicians don’t
understand.
But when we started developing a way to help people first with hair transplant using PRP
and extracellular matrix which is used for wound healing, we did – we learned that
there is a synergy that results in a long-term benefit with the use of PRP and extracellular
matrix.
We call it Hair Regeneration or TrichoStem Hair Regeneration which is our company that
we are slowly bringing out this treatment which we do perform in New York to people
who are – in other areas to help make it more accessible.
So what we do is – when we do this treatment; when we do it one time, for the majority of
patients, we’ve seen responses that last three to five years.
As we’ve developed this treatment further, we’ve also learned that in some cases, particularly
more advanced cases of hair loss, we find doing a second treatment between 12 and 15
months and also have some value in building upon the first.
PRP does not reverse hair thinning.
It stimulates hair growth.
But the hair growth may still be limited and can shed out.
With our treatment, we have shown over and over with hundreds and thousands of patients
have come from around the world that once we do the treatment, hair loss stops, hair
thickening begins, and that hair continues to grow.
We’ve been – we watched our patients very closely.
In fact, we see our patients and we do microscope photos and digital photography every three
months.
And we do that for 18 months and then we – we’ll do that even more another 18 months if we
do a second injection.
There’s a very important customization aspect of this and is why it took us a long time
to really develop a system that was consistent and scalable.
So from my perspective, I would recommend this type of treatment, hair regeneration,
where we do use PRP but we don’t use it alone.
In our experience, most people who go for PRP treatments for hair loss get injections
done once a month.
And maybe they feel like it works for after a few months, it may work for another few
months, but then they need the injections again.
And when you’re doing a series of injections that are monthly then you only getting a few
months of benefit, it’s a challenge to keep that going.
So I recommend you learn more about this technology, acellular matrix, platelet-rich plasma.
And learn and see if this may be of value to you.
There are a lot of different ways to help people with hair loss.
But there are a lot of limitations.
And what we have been able to succeed with is a method that is an alternative to surgery.
And in the context of current concerns of long term sexual side effects of medications
like finasteride, it really has hit a sweet spot that really helps a lot of people who
want a non-surgical option.
And in fact we’re helping a lot of people who otherwise would not have gone for the
surgical option; or would have done pharmaceutical or daily pill; or use of topical minoxidil.
So I hope that was helpful.
I wish you the best of luck.
And thank you for your question.