Thank you for your question.
You submitted a photo, a close-up of what appears your frontal hairline in your part.
And you’re asking if minoxidil injections typically help this area of the frontal hairline.
So certainly, I can share with you the basis for the use of minoxidil and certainly how
I approach hair loss in our practice.
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. Hair loss is a big part of my practice and in fact I’m the founder
of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers. This is a non-surgical solution that we developed
using Acellular matrix and PRP for hair loss for both men and women again without surgery.
So, I’m going to give you more details about this as I further discuss your concerns.
So, you know, I think that it’s interesting that you are asking about minoxidil injections.
As you may or may not be aware, minoxidil originally was a drug used for hypertension.
And it was in the 1980s that it was noticed that there was a stimulation of hair growth
with this drug. And so the rest was history and the topical form was developed that was
basically applied once a day to essentially stimulate some growth as well as to prolong
the growth cycle of thinning hair. It has been a successful way to manage hair loss
but it doesn’t stop the progression of hair loss.
Now for years, people have tried different ways to further enhance the absorption of
minoxidil. This includes different formulations where the top layers of skin is actually,
you try to break it down or thin it out so it gets more absorbed. This, very often, customized
formulations include topicals such as retinoids to help improve absorption. There are also
methods of doing microneedling to again further enhance absorption. Undoubtedly, there’s
going to be some thought or somewhere they’re going to do injections.
The challenge is, of course, is how sustainable are these treatments? How often will you get
injected or in order to sustain growth? You see, the challenge is, your concern is about
the frontal hairline but most often, that frontal hairline thinning is also a reflection
of more diffused thinning. And so, how many places can you inject and how sustainable
can this be?
Currently, when it comes to hair loss, for men, there is Propecia or finasteride which
is an oral drug, topical minoxidil and hair transplant and we’ve developed a category
called Hair Regeneration which I’ll discuss again further. Women, it’s basically minoxidil
and nothing else other than surgery and again, Hair Regeneration.
So a little about Hair Regeneration because you’ve already asked about injections and
injection is what we do with this treatment. Hair Regeneration evolved out of our desire
to improve outcomes with hair transplant. With hair transplant, there has been a lot
of frustration with the yield of the grafts in terms of the numbers of hairs that survived
and as well as the proper healing of the donor area. Well a side-effect was noticed which
was that thinning hairs, in some patients, got thicker. This was something that we started
about 7 years ago and we ultimately, through very rigorous process of analysis and development,
we created a protocol for different types of hair loss based on gender, degree of hair
loss, age of onset and essentially an algorithm. And what we’re doing is we’re injecting
a combination of Acellular matrix, platelet-rich plasma (PRP), vitamin D and doing this for
both men and women with the highest level of success with what’s called androgenetic
alopecia or genetic pattern loss. Now this injection, typically, when we started doing
this, essentially, we were trying to observe that the hairs sustainably grew and stayed
constant for over 5 years. And we certainly continuously evolved and improved our algorithm
and process. But essentially, a single set of injections at one visit was very effective.
Now we further developed other protocols but when it comes to other types of injections,
whether it’s minoxidil, it’s likely you’re going to need to do something like that monthly
and in the outer limit, maybe 3 months. The same goes for what is basically routine PRP
injections, platelet-rich plasma.
Again, Hair Regeneration is a combination of Acellular matrix which is a wound healing
material which is based on this very advanced stem cell technology that’s used for other
areas of surgery to improve wound healing and the use of platelet-rich plasma. Platelet-rich
plasma is derived from your own blood and it’s a concentration of the wound healing
and growth factors necessary. So when you get a cut, you’re actually healing.
Basically, we’ve evolved into a level that is, I think, is the next level of medical
care which is using your body’s own ability to heal, to manipulate what appears to be
pathways of hair growth in the physiology of hair. So again, I’m not saying that it’s
a perfect solution for long-term, beyond 5 years, but compared to what is currently available,
it’s been extremely effective. With both men and women, we’re seeing over 99% success
in terms of stopping progression, reactivating growth and prolonging hair growth cycles so
that the hairs continue to grow and doesn’t require continuous constant treatment.
So I think that it’s important that as you’re exploring injections as a category, learn
about the different modalities and always ask the question how frequently do you need
injections to sustain growth. I will tell you that a lot of our patients come to us
after they’ve tried other modalities with injections. For example, if they’re going
for PRP injections, they’re getting them once a month and after 4 months, they’re
starting to feel that they didn’t know where their end point was and how long could they
keep getting poked in the scalp. So it’s very important to understand that and understand
what kind of real outcomes you can achieve.
So there’s certainly more opportunity for you to do research and once you have completed
the acquisition of knowledge, you should move forward and meet with doctors and learn about
your options from them in terms of the specifics as to what you can expect for your situation.
Again, it’s very important to make sure that you also have the right diagnosis before
you move along with the treatment.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.