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Injecting Blood Into Your Scalp To Grow Hair?
12 February 2008
A family of Florida-based hair transplant doctors all named Joseph Greco (I, II, III, creative!) want to extract your blood and inject it back into your scalp.
More specifically, your Platelet Rich Plasma.
Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) is a collection of sticky molecules and growth factors extracted by spinning blood in a centrifuge for about half an hour. PRP has been established as a healing agent since the 90s in a myriad of medical applications, including anything from rhinoplasty to coronary bypasses. It beats down infections in chronic wounds, heals poisonous spider bites, acts as a glue in bone grafts, mends muscle injuries, and more or less kicks the sh*t out of any problem you squirt it on.
A few years ago, a well-regarded Brazilian plastic surgeon named Carlos Uebel started using PRP’s magic sauce to increase the density, growth and success of hair transplants. The extracted follicles are simply bathed in PRP before being placed back into the scalp. Our multi-generational Grecos got hold of this and have been championing the technique in the states, complete with corny instructional videos that look like deleted scenes from Innerspace.
Here’s the twist: will Platelet Rich Plasma improve the quality of your hair without transplant surgery? The Grecos think so, and are conducting informal experiments on patients in their Sarasota office. They inject PRP directly into the scalp, then roll the skin with what appears to be a Dermaroller.
It’s always nice to see doctors in a field as dogmatic as hair transplantation trying something new, and this does fit vaguely with the cell-based technologies of ACell and Follica, but one can’t help see this as eager surgeons playing in a very expensive sandbox. Something else to consider: one of the growth factors abundant in PRP is Transforming Growth Factor Beta (TGFß), which has been implicated in some of the contributing factors in hair loss. How will this effect the outcome?
http://tressless.com/2008/02/12/injecti ... grow-hair/
12 February 2008
A family of Florida-based hair transplant doctors all named Joseph Greco (I, II, III, creative!) want to extract your blood and inject it back into your scalp.
More specifically, your Platelet Rich Plasma.
Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) is a collection of sticky molecules and growth factors extracted by spinning blood in a centrifuge for about half an hour. PRP has been established as a healing agent since the 90s in a myriad of medical applications, including anything from rhinoplasty to coronary bypasses. It beats down infections in chronic wounds, heals poisonous spider bites, acts as a glue in bone grafts, mends muscle injuries, and more or less kicks the sh*t out of any problem you squirt it on.
A few years ago, a well-regarded Brazilian plastic surgeon named Carlos Uebel started using PRP’s magic sauce to increase the density, growth and success of hair transplants. The extracted follicles are simply bathed in PRP before being placed back into the scalp. Our multi-generational Grecos got hold of this and have been championing the technique in the states, complete with corny instructional videos that look like deleted scenes from Innerspace.
Here’s the twist: will Platelet Rich Plasma improve the quality of your hair without transplant surgery? The Grecos think so, and are conducting informal experiments on patients in their Sarasota office. They inject PRP directly into the scalp, then roll the skin with what appears to be a Dermaroller.
It’s always nice to see doctors in a field as dogmatic as hair transplantation trying something new, and this does fit vaguely with the cell-based technologies of ACell and Follica, but one can’t help see this as eager surgeons playing in a very expensive sandbox. Something else to consider: one of the growth factors abundant in PRP is Transforming Growth Factor Beta (TGFß), which has been implicated in some of the contributing factors in hair loss. How will this effect the outcome?
http://tressless.com/2008/02/12/injecti ... grow-hair/
