Thank you for your question. You are asking a question whether it is normal not to be
numbed before PRP injections and you go on to describe in the detail in your question
that your physician, who performed this treatment, felt that the numbing would interfere with
the effectiveness of the treatment and you describe the experience as being very painful.
Well, I can certainly give you my experience with this type of treatment. In our practice,
we do hair loss treatment similarly in our practice every day. A little bit of background,
I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial plastic and
reconstructive surgeon. I am also the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers,
a system we developed which uses platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in addition to a material called
Acellular matrix and other elements to help men and women from around the world treat
male and female pattern hair loss. I’ve been in practice for over 20 years and we
use platelet-rich plasma (PRP) for hair loss every day as I mentioned earlier. So, I am
familiar with this practice. And I can tell you from our local area, New York City, we
have an office in Manhattan and I’ve been aware that there are colleagues who do believe
in doing this treatment without any anesthetic. Now, I think that from the feedback we are
getting from patients who come to us that they would go monthly for platelet-rich plasma
(PRP) injections and they endure a fair amount of discomfort getting these injections. And
by the 4th month, they were questioning the justification of the pain and the results
therein and where the endpoint would be.
I can tell you that from personal practice, style and from my own philosophy is pain should
be avoided as much as possible. Frankly, as a cosmetic surgeon, as a specialist who does
everything from head to toe in the cosmetic field and with specialized areas beyond that,
it has been my mission from day one to make my patients comfortable and to make cosmetic
procedures less daunting and more accessible. So from the beginning of my career where I
proved that lower eyelid, upper eyelid cosmetic surgery and face lifting surgery, I can perform
without general anesthesia but under local anesthesia with LITE™ IV sedation and evolving
so many procedures that we do everything in a way so that our patients, whether they are
sedated or whether they are wide awake, are completely comfortable.
So when I we perform Hair Regeneration and I’ll explain that a little bit. Hair Regeneration
is a system we developed based on a technology for wound healing using platelet-rich plasma
(PRP) and Acellular matrix. We are able to help patients who come to us, as a I mentioned
from around the world, with 99% successful outcomes meaning stopping the progression
of hair loss, reactivation of hair that is not growing, as well as inducing shedding
of thinning hair and the re-growth of thicker hair with a single treatment. And in some
cases, maybe a second treatment around 15-18 months later but with our data of beyond 5
years, patients have continued to benefit from a single session.
Now that being said, I can see how it would be pretty daunting to go back for platelet-rich
plasma (PRP) treatment without topical or any anesthetic. As I said, I am familiar with
this practice and I don’t know exactly what the justification is. However, I can tell
you from our experience, what we do for our patients and even with successful numbing,
we are able to get pretty amazing results. What do we do first? We use topical anesthetic.
We apply it around the scalp, around the perimeter of the planned area of treatment and let that
anesthetic work for a while and then we do what’s called a ring block like what is
done for hair transplant so that the top of the scalp is completely numbed and then I
do the actual injection treatment. So with a fairly good treatment process where we do
numb the scalp, we’ve had tremendous success with this treatment.
So I understand that every doctor has their justification but I think it is reasonable
to at least ask the question is pain necessary and from my experience, pain is not necessary
to have to put up with throughout this process. Once the top of the scalp is numbed and I
am not saying that it is painless from the beginning. A few little local anesthetic injections
are going to be uncomfortable but we use the tiniest needles after application of topical
anesthetic. That being said, Hair Regeneration has been extremely successful for us so I
think that you need to figure out what is right for you. Like I said, a lot of people
come to us once they got tired of feeling uncomfortable with the platelet-rich plasma
(PRP) injections without anesthetic. So learn more and make some decision so that you can
feel better about treating your hair loss.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.