If you are a woman suffering from temple recession or overall female pattern baldness, a treatment for thinning hair may be very much on your mind. You may have heard about platelet rich plasma (PRP) as being an effective new therapy. But what is the reality? Can PRP hair treatment really halt or reverse hair loss in women?
Take heart: preliminary studies from the National Institutes of Health report a “significant reduction in hair loss was observed between first and fourth injection. Hair count increased from average number of 71 hair follicular units to 93 hair follicular units.”
Other reports from such reputable sources as the New York Times on PRP for women’s hair loss and the Mayo Clinic’s findings on PRP as a form of regenerative medicine are also cause for optimism.
At La Mesa Hair Restoration we can unequivocally say that we have achieved excellent results for a number of our female patients who have been treated with PRP therapy for thinning hair.
How does PRP hair treatment work?
PRP was first pioneered to treat injuries. The procedure involves drawing a small amount of your own blood, spinning it in a centrifuge to concentrate the platelets to a level that is 6-7 times the concentration normally found in blood. An extracellular matrix, ACell, which may stimulate follicle stem cells, is added to the PRP. The scalp is numbed with a local anesthetic, then the mixture is injected it into the areas where hair is thinning. This appears to stimulate the thinning hair by virtue of the growth factors contained within the platelets.
