Thank you for your question.
You submitted a single photo and the question you are stating that you’ve been on Accutane
10 mg for less than a month and you want to know if it’s safe to do platelet-rich plasma
(PRP) and you were concern about the effect of improvement of the skin quality and you
want to know whether there is an issue while you are on Accutane or should you wait until
you stop using Accutane before doing platelet-rich plasma (PRP).
Well, I can certainly give you my perspective on your question and on how I counsel someone
like yourself in my practice.
So just 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 use a lot of
platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in my practice for everything such as improvement of skin
glow and in terms of complexion for acne scars, for under eye dark circles, I use a lot for
healing after laser and we even combined that with Acellular matrix in a method we developed
called Hair Regeneration for male and female pattern hair loss.
So, I have a lot of experience with platelet-rich plasma (PRP).
So, I understand your eagerness to want to do something but you should at least have
an understanding of what the role of Accutane is for your situation.
Clearly, you met with the physician who felt that it was beneficial to you to have / to
be placed with Accutane and the reason is because you are dealing with a lot of inflammation,
a lot of acne.
So what Accutane essentially does it shrinks the glands that are responsible for secreting
the oils that are associated with acne.
Now it is important to understand when this advice is given about stopping Accutane and
then doing a procedure it is generally with the idea of how is the skin going to heal.
You see the functional restoration of let’s say the skin after trauma or injury.
the epidermis requires functioning what’s called pilosebaceous units.
The little hair follicles that are called the vellus hair as well as the regular hair
follicles that you can see that’s where the epidermis come back from.
Now that being understood, you can understand that when the skin is traumatized in someone
who is on Accutane there is a potential for scarring that’s undesirable.
So when it comes to platelet-rich plasma (PRP) technically speaking you can get platelet-rich
plasma (PRP) injection because the injection is not really traumatizing the skin very much
but the question really is from my mind is what’s the role of platelet-rich plasma
(PRP) at this point of your acne treatment.
I would typically suggest to someone like yourself is to wait, allow active inflammation
be resolved, see how your skin looks and then you can start with considering doing platelet-rich
plasma (PRP) and seeing how it improves the skin.
You know platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a concentration of the wound healing factors necessary when
you have a cut.
So it stimulates collagen, it stimulates blood supply, it does so many things that benefit
the skin quality that we use it a lot to help our patients in a variety of situations as
I mentioned earlier.
So from that understanding it’s almost like you might be overlapping something unnecessarily,
you may want to just first resolve active inflammation.
Let the acne resolve and calm down and then consider platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection
and I want to differentiate that from the treatments that often are combined with platelet-rich
plasma (PRP) such as microneedling.
If you are going to microneedle then now you are making multiple injuries in the skin and
you really rely on the skin to be regenerated through the hair follicles.
So in general, I would say that for mild procedure with minimal trauma like microneedling you
want to wait at least 3 months and probably I would recommend 6 months.
I think there isn’t a lot lost and I think that is what probably concern most about is
missed opportunities but I would tell you that we use platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in
people who are much older and they benefit so you don’t have to necessarily rush everything
all at once.
I would say allow the Accutane to work, do whatever else you need to do, discuss with
your doctor when is safe to do this other procedures, let your doctor guide you.
Usually, Accutane is prescribed by a dermatologist.
Dermatologist have the most experience with the use of this drug because they treat so
much acne particularly adolescent acne and in that subgroup cystic acne and so it is
very important that an experience doctor guide you about their opinion based on when they
recommend patients do anything invasive after completion of Accutane therapy.
In our practice we always wait at least 6 months and even it’s a little bit longer
or a year that’s okay too because in these types of situations where we try to work on
improving skin quality this timeframe is really not that much of an issue, and in terms of
missed opportunity, your skin is not going to deteriorate in that time if you do something.
The skin especially when you are younger has remarkable resilience and so just do things
methodically and it’s not always best to do multiple things at once.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.