Thank you for your question.
You submitted your question without a photo. And you stated in your question that you’re
interested in thickening your hair with PRP and that you’re 35-years-old but then you
read in a forum that there’s a link between PRP and cancer and so you’re asking about
that particular concern and naturally, you want to make sure that there’s no significant
risk like cancer associated with PRP.
Well, I can certainly share with you how I discuss PRP with my patients in my 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. I am also the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers. This
is a system we developed which began with the use of PRP and a material called extracellular
matrix which has become a very significant path to helping people with hair loss non-surgically
for both male and female pattern hair loss and I’ll discuss this a little bit further
as I discuss the concerns you have with your question.
So to understand the time wherein, in terms of the role of PRP with hair loss, I have
to say that I’m reflecting on a lot of years of experience with PRP. In fact in our practice,
as a cosmetic surgeon, we use PRP very routinely. We use it for wrinkles, we use it for acne
scars, we use it for under eye dark circles. And as I said earlier, we combine PRP with
a material called extracellular matrix for the treatment of male and female pattern hair
loss.
Now, to go into further to how people are doing research in the modern world, we often
use in the medical field the term “Dr. Google” and essentially, everyone does research by
going into the web. That’s a fact of reality especially in the practice of medicine. The
challenge is being able to distinguish good useful information from what is being bounced
around without having any clear understanding of the source and the authority of that information.
In the modern world, information is often repeated and is given a certain value, because
of that even though it may or may not be necessarily factually based. And the concern also about
forums, you know, I think one of the challenges again is that there are good things that come
with people having an open dialogue discussion and then there is of course understanding
who is actually participating in these dialogues and discussions and further, what is the agenda
of people who run the forums.
So without getting into specifics, I can tell you that like yourself, a lot of people who
come to us have this type of concern and I can tell you that if you’re specifically
talking about let’s say just about the scalp, let’s just limit it there. We have already
enough experience of PRP in multiple areas throughout the body. And the history of PRP
in medicine began with oral surgery back in the late 90s then went on with orthopedic
surgery and then went on further to aesthetics. Now interestingly, there was a tremendous
amount of skepticism and resistance by plastic surgeons and dermatologists about the benefits
of PRP and in particular, the benefits of it in hair loss. Recently, publications are
coming out about the benefits of PRP with hair loss and remarkably, like the behavior
of an entire herd, almost every patient who has previously had PRP injection will mention
that they had a dermatologist do the PRP injection which is kind of interesting because there
were a lot of dermatologists dismissing PRP and its value.
Nevertheless, as far as when you think of cancers in the scalp, you have to think about
basically hair is a skin appendage which means you have to think of various types of skin
cancers and their relative risks. Relatively risk for skin cancers are essentially are
more related to ultraviolet light such as sunlight or sun damage as a source for conversion
of particular cell lines into cancer. So the cancers that you have to be concerned about
if you want to be checked include basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma.
Now even though there may be some theoretical ideas around PRP and its role in causing cancer
or accelerating cancer, I have not any concern about that. I think that the mechanism of
cancer has to do more with repeated exposure to something that converts cells through DNA
damage into tumor cells.
Now PRP is derived from your own blood and to go further now into the details of how
we manage hair loss and now I could say that I have no reservations with using PRP anywhere
else in the body including the scalp. I also want to give you some guidance as to what
is the role of PRP in hair loss. To begin with, we have to understand that hair loss
has to be managed individually. Everybody comes into the world, as I have observed and
we have been doing this particular treatment Hair Regeneration for the past 7 years and
we have been treating patients from all over the world. Hair loss is expressed in different
ways for different people and there is one common reality. Hair loss is progressive and
when I look at people, I think of where do they fall in that relative amount of progression.
So I look at patients in terms of age of onset, the age they are currently are at when they
come for consultation, the degree of hair loss and then make a determination as to the
relative aggressiveness of that hair loss.
Now, the physiologic effects of PRP alone in my experience has been a short-term stimulation
of hair growth. It doesn’t necessarily stop the progression but in a way, indirectly appears
to because you start to get regrowth. The sustainability of that regrowth is going to
be variable. And what I have observed now that more people are offering PRP is that
patients are coming to me and basically expressing and relaying to me the general lack of experience
of the doctor performing it and I can understand that. When you are doing something like this
relatively new, you still don’t understand exactly how it’s going to behave until you
have enough clinical experience.
And I can tell you that what we have done in our practice is we’ve done something
called Hair Regeneration. Hair Regeneration was developed from the observation that thinning
hair became thicker when we use this material, extracellular matrix with PRP at the time
of hair transplant. Over the course or several years, I developed a system and protocol and
ultimately, we’ve been able to manage and help people with hair loss both male and female
pattern hair loss. When we do this treatment, we’re able to establish much longer term
management of hair loss and that is where there’s a big distinction. A lot of people
who go for PRP have to go with some frequency either every month, every 3 months and with
no clear understanding as to what is the horizon of that continual treatment.
And what happens if you stop? With our system and what we’re doing, like I said, we’ve
been treating patients from all over the world, we have a lot of experience that we are able
to provide our patients with more accurate prognosis and a proper approach that essentially
is typically one injection and then we follow our patients for 5 years and see them every
3-6 months. And then in certain patients, we do something like a booster treatment somewhere
in 15-18 months again depending on their particular category of hair loss.
In terms of safety, I think that you can put your mind at ease that it is a safe modality
and it should not cause you to develop a malignancy. But I would recommend that you learn more
about PRP. Learn about your doctor’s experience with this and also learn about Hair Regeneration
and the concept of using PRP with extracellular matrix in terms of the management of hair
loss in your specific type.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.