Will Acell/PRP help me stop loosing my hair and regrow hair? I am a 27 year old female.

A female has some options for the treatment of hair loss. The first step is to determine the origin of your hair loss. You do this by visiting your dermatologist for a medical work up of your hair loss and perhaps two 4mm skin biopsies in the affected area of hair loss. The biopsies are read in horizontal section and vertical section, and they must be evaluated by an experienced dermatopathologist, who has specific training in reading hair biopsies.

Female pattern hair loss is quite common and seems to affect about 10% of all women. The condition is treated with Rogaine 2% once or twice a day. You cannot take Finasteride as it might adversely affect the development of a male offspring.
PRP/Acell is used to treat female pattern hair loss. It does not work on all women, but can improve your coverage. You should consider giving it a try once you have documented the specific cause of your hair loss. There is not need to begin a treatment that will not work for you should the cause of your hair loss be due to some other medical condition. Female pattern hair loss does seem to run in families, which is what you have described. Other medical conditions can affect families too so you should have your condition evaluated properly prior to seeking any medical treatment.

Dr. Cole, can you really get better coverage with fewer grafts using FUE?

Many poorly informed physicians claim that you cannot get as good of a result with FUE as you can with strip surgery. Strip surgeons use this misinformation as marketing for strip surgery. Such is not the case. As I’ve stated for many years, you can get better results with FUE than you can from strip surgery. The reason are quite evident. First, with FUE, the grafts spend less time out of body. Second, the FUE grafts contain more hair in each graft than with strip surgery. In fact, the average FUE graft contains 50% more hair than the average strip graft.

Here is a classic example. Most strip physicians would have done 2500 to 3000 grafts in this case to obtain a comparable result that we obtained with only 1800 grafts. Not only did we show that one can obtain better coverage with fewer grafts, we showed that this FUE result from 2004 has stood the test of time. Seven years later the patient still has outstanding coverage despite further hair loss.

Over all planning includes planning for the future. If a patient agrees to planning for the future, further surgery in the short term to keep up with future hair loss is often avoided for many years.

The following patient had CIT procedure of 1,845 grafts. His results show the benefits of the CIT method of FUE.

Dear Dr. Cole, I have a scar on the top of my head from a traumatic injury.  I reside in Bangkok.  I desire to fill this area in with grafts obtained by FUE.  I am of Asian decent.  Is it possible to graft this scar on the top of my head, and where I should have the procedure done.

Yes, it is possible to graft scars due to trauma.  We recently had a patient return to our office following a procedure to help conceal the scar.  He had an excellent yield and result.  Asian patients are ideally suited for FUE procedures to treat both balding areas and scars.

This patient of Korean ancestry returned following treatment for an area of alopecia secondary to a traumatic delivery.  He developed this large area of hair loss following forceps trauma during his delivery.  The trauma damaged the follicles and the area healed by secondary intention.  The results from the initial surgery are 10 months subsequent to hair transplant surgery using the CIT method of FUE.  Because the grafted area was scar tissue, we did not attempt maximal density with the transplant procedure.  Scar tissue has excellent circulation, but high densities might affect the yield so we generally begin with a lower density of 30 to 40 grafts per square cm.  The patient returned to our office in an effort to add additional density.  In the initial procedure we placed 203 grafts.  In the follow up procedure we added an additional 243 grafts.

We have two affiliate clinics in Asia that can provide FUE.  One is in Singapore and is staffed by Dr. Tyng Tan.  The other is in South Korea and is a Dr. Cole Forhair clinic.

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I commute between Japan and Singapore and I’m interested in getting treatment for my hair loss using Acell and PRP.  What do you recommend for me as I am trying to postpone hair transplant surgery.

I began using Acell in combination with PRP long before anyone else considered this combination.  The rationale was quite simple.  PRP is loaded with growth factors and Acell provides a scaffold with stem cell attraction for these growth factors to set up on and provide a potential sustained release of growth factors to newly activated stems cells that migrated to the region.  I based my rationale on the work that Joe Greco was doing with a natural ECM that he had manufactured from his patient’s blood.  Joe was seeing a positive influence in terms of improved coverage from existing hair due to hair shaft thickening in up to 70% of his patients.

The treatment appears to improve coverage of existing hair by thickening the hair shaft diameter.  It works well on up to 70% of patients, but not so well in the remainder.  It carries no known risks other than a potential sensitivity reaction risk to the thrombin or the Acell, which are derived from mammalian xenogeneic collagen sources.    We are yet to see such a reaction.

Currently you can get an Acell/PRP treatment in our office located in Atlanta, GA.  We do have affiliate offices located in Seoul, South Korea, and in Singapore.  Neither office currently offers Acell in their office.  Dr. Tyng Tang http://hairandlaserclinic.com runs the hair transplant office in Singapore.  We hope that both offices will soon offer PRP, Acell, and Thrombin activation soon.

I am planning sexual reassignment surgery because I am a woman inside and out. Unfortunately, I have androgenic alopecia. Is it possible to undergo a hair transplant to give me a feminine look?

Yes, we frequently treat transgender patients who wish to become more feminine.  The following is an example of such a case.  The patient has androgenic alopecia, unfortunately.  The patient desired to treat the area of hair loss to achieve a more acceptable feminine appearance.  The patient had 3200 grafts placed on the top and front of the scalp.  Initially, she planned to wear a hair system in the crown area, but due to the success of the initial procedure, she elected to also treat the crown area with grafts.

In treating transgender patients who wish to enhance their feminine appearance, it is important to build a feminine hairline and get as much density as possible.  Often times it takes a second procedure to achieve the density these ladies desire.

The grafts in this instance were all harvested using the Power Cole Isolation Device or PCID.  The grafts were harvested at a rate of over 2000 per hour.  This is an excellent example of how FUE can work in transgender patients.

One thing she was very proud of was her conversation with other physicians involved in her care.  They all wanted to know where the strip scar was.  When she informed them that the procedure was done without a scalpel, they are all amazed.  That’s the power of FUE.