PRP for Hair Restoration

Full, thick hair has long been associated with youth and vitality. Unfortunately, many men and women struggle with thinning hair and receding hairlines as they age. Finding effective treatments can be frustrating, expensive, and leave patients feeling dissatisfied with their options.

What Causes Hair Loss?

Hair loss can occur along a broad spectrum from mild thinning to total baldness. Hair loss is classified into the following categories, depending on the cause:

Drug side effect – blood thinners, amphetamines, lithium, beta-blockers, and chemotherapy drugs are just a few of the medications that may cause hair loss

Symptom of a medical illness – lupus, thyroid dysfunction, hormone imbalance, and nutritional deficiencies can all cause the hair to fall out

Telogen effluvium – occurs after a major physical stressor such as serious illness, surgery, or infection

Tinea capitis – fungal infection of the scalp

Alopecia areata – an autoimmune disease that causes the hair to fall out in patches

Traumatic alopecia – results from overly harsh hairdressing techniques or from trichotillomania

Androgenic alopecia – also known as male-pattern baldness (or female-pattern baldness), this results from a combination of genetic and hormonal factors1

Treatments for Hair Loss

Treatment for hair loss ultimately depends on the cause. While most types of hair loss improve over time or with specific treatment aimed at the cause, androgenic alopecia can be much more difficult to reverse.

Standard treatment options for androgenic alopecia include:

Drugs including topical minoxidil, oral finasteride and dutasteride for men; and estrogen, spironolactone, and finasteride for women

Surgery including hair transplants or scalp-reduction2

Assuming your patient is not ready to undergo expensive and invasive surgery to treat his or her hair loss, drugs typically become the default treatment.

However, this approach can have the following serious drawbacks for your patient:

Finasteride can cause diminished sex drive and sexual function, and an increased risk of prostate cancer.

Minoxidil can cause scalp irritation and unwanted hair growth on the face and hands.

Patients must keep taking the drug or any regrown hair will fall out.

It can be dangerous to take these drugs for patients who are pregnant or who have certain medical conditions, such as heart disease.3

As a doctor, the last thing you want is your patients trading one problem for another, potentially bigger, problem.

Due to the limited number of safe, effective therapies for androgenic alopecia, platelet-rich plasma has become a viable alternative treatment option.4

Platelet-Rich Plasma to Treat Hair Loss

Platelet-rich plasma, or PRP, is showing great promise as an effective treatment for hair restoration. Rather than altering hormone levels or physically transplanting healthier hair, PRP uses the body’s own natural healing process to stimulate hair regeneration.

But how does it work?

 PRP stimulates the body’s innate healing cascade. When we experience an injury, our body responds by delivering a rush of platelet cells. When these platelets are activated, they release several types of growth factors, proteins, and cytokines that play a fundamental role in cell regeneration and tissue healing.

But PRP takes the natural healing response one step further by separating platelets from other blood components and concentrating them. This specially prepared platelet-rich plasma contains 5 to 10 times the concentration of platelets found in whole blood. The concentrated PRP is then delivered into and around the balding and thinning areas of the scalp via injection, stimulating and significantly strengthening the body’s healing response.5

The growth factors in the platelets act on stem cells located in the hair follicles. This stimulates the growth of new hair follicles and causes neovascularization.6

Since PRP is an autologous therapy, using the patient’s own blood product, there is no risk of cross reactivity, disease transmission, or immune reaction.

When injected into thinning and balding areas of the scalp, the growth factors in PRP can encourage thicker, healthier, and fuller hair growth. Studies have shown that PRP can:

Increase the proliferation of dermal papilla (hair-generating) cells

Increase the survival, differentiation, and proliferation of hair follicle cells

Increase the length of the hair’s anagen phase.7

Increase hair density in patients with androgenic alopecia (baldness).8

Complex baldness may require monthly PRP injections for a duration of four to six months. Annual maintenance therapy may be required for maximum effectiveness.9

The PRP Process 

• To create a platelet-rich plasma preparation, the following steps are performed:
• A small sample of blood is drawn from the patient and injected into the ACD A + Gel tube .
• The platelets are then separated from the other blood components and their concentration is increased using the Hitech centrifuge.
• The resulting platelet-rich plasma is then injected into and around the affected areas of the patient’s scalp.
• The concentrated growth factors contained in the plasma trigger a mild inflammatory response which effectively jump starts the body’s own natural healing response.
• The entire process takes approximately one hour, including preparation and recovery time.