Thank you for your question.
You submitted a question without a photo but essentially you’re asking how soon after
your hair transplant can you do PRP. And you’ve also mentioned that it’s now two weeks from
your transplant and you’ve developed a flaky scalp.
Well, I can certainly give you some guidance based on your question alone on how PRP and
something else I’ll discuss further can have some potential value in the context of
your hair transplant. A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and
Fellowship-trained oculofacial plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I have been in practice
in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years. I am the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration
Centers, a system we developed using PRP as well as Acellular matrix to treat non-surgically
male and female pattern hair loss. And essentially, we’ve established a new category in the
treatment of hair loss and have been at it for several years going into seven years at
this point.
So I think it’s very important for you to understand first what is the normal healing
process for a hair transplant and then I’ll share with you my strategy as to how I help
patients who come to us from around the world after hair transplant to help optimize their
results. So to begin with, as far as this perception of flaky skin after the transplant,
I think what you’re dealing with essentially is a combination of the scabs from the hair
transplants, maybe not fully completely gone as well as this dead skin that tends to accumulate
after hair transplant. A lot of patients are a little too cautious when it comes to washing
their hair after a hair transplant because their afraid that they’re going to lose
their grafts.
Well, we’ve been doing hair transplants for a long time and I can tell you that really,
after 48 hours, it actually takes a surgical instrument to actually make a hair transplant
come out. It’s not likely that would be the case. So myself and my technicians are
often counseling patients on how to wash their hair properly and even scrub their scalp to
get rid of these flaky areas. But this is a question that you should pose to your hair
transplant surgeon as far as the aftercare because you have to make sure that there’s
nothing else going on especially if you have any history of seborrheic dermatitis which
also may potentially need to be managed. So again, in the absence of a photo and additional
medical history, I can’t really comment beyond that.
Now as far as PRP is concerned, it is actually long overdue that the dermatology literature
is actually acknowledging that PRP does have many benefits. And even though there have
been thousands of articles, I’ve now been more aware of more recent publications which
actually acknowledge this and finally, PRP is being more slowly accepted.
However, when it comes to the hair growth effect of PRP, I would say that what we’ve
done in our practice for the past seven years has actually taken this to the treatment of
both hair loss and wound healing to a different level. What we’ve developed is something
called Hair Regeneration and where it’s relevant, I’ll be able to explain further.
Years ago, when we were doing hair transplants and we wanted the grafts to heal better and
we wanted the donor area to heal better, we were using a material called extracellular
matrix and we’ve found that the wound healing improved, the grafts healed sooner and in
fact, growth of the hair grafts actually occurred earlier. But another interesting benefit was
that thinning hair actually became thicker. So we were actually developing an opportunity
or finding an opportunity to help people with hair thinning without doing surgery. And that’s
what we did over the first several years is developed a system of doing these injections
using PRP and extracellular matrix and developed an algorithm and system to treat men and women
with genetic pattern loss as well as people with other conditions related to hair loss.
Now when it comes to hair transplant, we’ve also been able to establish that someone who
has a hair transplant, there is a window of opportunity and I basically feel it’s within
the first 1-3 months that we can actually help that person’s healing after the transplant.
We can expedite the healing of the grafts, improve the healing of the tissue that’s
been traumatized by all of these surgical procedures as well as help the thinning hairs
and often the hairs that can have potentially been compromised from the surgery. I’m talking
about the native hairs that were basically in the same neighborhood as the grafted hairs,
help improve those hairs as well as help them regrow and strengthen. Basically, on its own
without the transplant, with Hair Regeneration, we’ve been able to show that we can stop
progression, we can reactive hair that is not currently growing, we can thicken hair
that is thinning as well as induce the shed of thinning hair and grow thicker hair.
So when you ask the question of when can you do PRP, I would say that you should allow
the scabs and the top of the scalp become more clear and stable and I think that you
can start as early as a month after the transplant. And I would say that you also need to at least
understand that PRP, at least from my experience, PRP can probably help you with the healing
process but I have found that the treatment of Hair Regeneration with PRP and Acellular
matrix, this wound healing material, I didn’t explain it earlier, a wound healing material
that leverages your own ability to generate adult stem cells in a way that has really
been a tremendous benefit when it comes to healing wounds in the skin, in muscle and
other areas. And for us, in terms of tissue quality, it has made a big impact in a lot
of the surgical procedures that we do. So this combination has been significant in changing
the narrative of managing hair loss as well as helping people, who, regardless of whether
we do their transplant or they had their transplant elsewhere, have found the benefits of this
wound healing technology.
So I think you should just, of course, ask this question about PRP to your doctor. Learn
more about Hair Regeneration and Acellular matrix and become more knowledgeable and then
come up with a plan that will be suited for your situation.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.