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First PRP treatment in New York-Dr. Alan Feller


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I will be having a PRP treatment with Dr. Feller this coming Monday, August 3rd. I'll see if I can get some before pics to post and then post updated pics as things progress.

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I'm hopeful that those who have read my few posts don't interpret the information to mean that I consider PRP a cure all. I don't. I did some research and decided to move forward and have the treatment. For me, I considered two things. First, I felt comfortable with what research I performed on the subject. Second, I could afford to throw money at a treatment that has yet to be proven effective.

 

Interestingly, several years ago I found this forum while searching for hair loss help. There were no guarantees that a physician recommended by this website would satisfy my hair loss concerns. I am not a perfect human being. I did the best I could and made, what I thought were well informed decisions. I feel the same way about my decision to have Joe Greco perform a PRP treatment on my scalp. To this point I do not regret the decision but only time will tell. BTW-It is one month tomorrow.

 

For those of you who remain cautious to the end, I applaud your decision and stand by you. For those of you, like me, who have decided to give PRP a shot, the same applies to you. I wish us all well in this journey to find answers to our hair loss concerns and I respectfully thank each and every one of you who have contributed to this forum in any fashion.

 

As the days pass, I am more than happy to share my self-assessment of PRP as a hair loss treatment. I have no photos. I simply don't enjoy looking at myself that much. However, there are forum members here that live in Chicago and I'd be willing to meet anyone in person and share what I can.

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brentipold,

 

I'm pretty sure I responded to your question. If I may suggest, please return to page 11 and see my response immediately after your question posted 27 July 09. Did I miss something else?

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This is what Dr. Rassman had to say after the meeting in amsterdam about the PRP topics.. Kind of put me in a bad mood since I was planning on getting it done but now I don't know if I will.

 

"PRP:

The use of platelet rich plasma (PRP) was a theme for many scientific papers. We have known that for topical use on skin wounds, this PRP has shown value in accelerating healing when applied. Studies for its application for alopecia areata was suggested by one doctor and a few doctors have started to soak the grafts in the plasma of patients to see if the grafts grew sooner, looked more robust and had a high ???take??? rate. I would not trust the conclusions of these doctors without a good scientific study to back up their observations. For the moment, I would call this ???human experimentation???."

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I would like to hear what Dr. Feller's thoughts on PRP are now after the meeting since he might have had a chance to speak with other docs who are using it. I am too young and dont have enough loss for a HT, I am too nervous about finasteride, minox doesn't really work on the frontal scalp so I am stuck with Nizoral. So I was hoping prp would work somewhat but I have yet to read one positive result from a patient who is not on other meds that would effect his results. All the "good" stuff has come from a couple doctors and that makes me nervous to spend about 80 hours of work on a treatment where I have not heard one good result that says before I did prp I was losing hair and after my hair loss slowed down or stopped or reversed.

 

I am also nervous because some people say it takes a couple months to work but in Greco's study it says by the 8th month it wears off, so that means it only works for 4-6 months??

 

I want to do something but it seems like I have no options.

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I did not say that there are no options, I said that I have no options for the reasons I listed above. One reason I am not taking propecia is because I had side effects from saw palmetto which led me to believe that I would be much worse on propecia. Also does rogaine work on the hairline and frontal scalp??? I heard it does not

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nyny12, The result Dr Feller posted on page 4 of this thread was for a guy that was on no meds if I remember correctly.

 

Dr Rassman, as are many other Dr's, right to be sceptical. PRP as yet, is unproven. Large scale randomised clinical trials are the standard for all therapies for all illnesses, but NO ONE will fund a Randomised clinical trial for PRP unless they can patent it.

 

Merck only spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing propecia and proving its effectiveness in trials because they could get a ten-year patent on it, which means only they can sell it until 2013, and charge whatever they want for it.

 

What I am saying is that we don't have the usual top standard data we usually do, but for PRP the only way to find out how good it is, is for docs to actually treat loads of people. This is why Dr Feller is encouraging all Docs to Start it - so we can guage how good it really is. It's easy for other docs to sit back and say - "there's no data". If all docs had that approach to PRP then you could guarantee it would never become a mainstream hairloss treatment, no matter how good it could be.

_________________________________________________

Propecia since July 2008

2201 Grafts with Dr Lorenzo on 19.10.22 - See my write up here:

 

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yea I just saw that. I am still trying to find out what the best case scenario is for prp, does it slow down loss for 6-8months, stop loss for 6-8months, grow hair, reverse miniaturization etc.. A couple doctors keep telling me that I may see "results" from prp and I may not but when it comes to hair loss results are pretty vague and I just want to know what they have seen.

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Best case scenerio - you will be a responder, otherwise your better off saving your $ for a FUE session IMO.

 

 

Originally posted by nyny12:

yea I just saw that. I am still trying to find out what the best case scenario is for prp, does it slow down loss for 6-8months, stop loss for 6-8months, grow hair, reverse miniaturization etc.. A couple doctors keep telling me that I may see "results" from prp and I may not but when it comes to hair loss results are pretty vague and I just want to know what they have seen.

Dec. 2004 - 1938 Grafts via Strip

Feb. 2009 - 1002 Grafts via FUE

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Originally posted by nyny12:

yea I just saw that. I am still trying to find out what the best case scenario is for prp, does it slow down loss for 6-8months, stop loss for 6-8months, grow hair, reverse miniaturization etc.. A couple doctors keep telling me that I may see "results" from prp and I may not but when it comes to hair loss results are pretty vague and I just want to know what they have seen.

 

As a few others have said, there is not way to tell without performing 100's if not 1000's of PRP procedures to truly get an idea of it's effectiveness.

 

From the way it sounds, I personally think it will thicken existing hair and potentially keep what you have without the nasty side effects...

 

Re growth? no clue, hopefully after some of these procedures we will find out for sure.

 

 

As an added bonus I am hoping it aids in the recovery and yield of a HT.. only time will tell if any of this is true

First transplant with karamikian 6/05, less than 1000 to my hairline, result was mediocre at best.

2nd HT with Feller 2/08, 3000+ to my front third.

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Yea well if one prp treatment a year can do even 75% of what propecia can do then I have absolutely no problem doing prp especially since I am really nervous about propecia. I am just trying to figure out if I should wait ( and risk further hair loss since I am not on propecia) or just do the prp and see what happens.

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dont know if this has been posted but check the video on the march 12th post of Dr. Grecos Blog.

 

http://doctorgreco.blogspot.com/

 

Patient looks like he has great results however the first shot of him getting the treatment is actually him getting the 2nd treatment and his head does not look as thick as it does in the after shot. I dont know if we should read into that at all.

 

Anyways I found out that this patient was not on any meds and has not had a HT. He had 2 prp treatments 9 months apart.

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im not really sure what you are looking for nyny. no one knows how well prp will work. regardless your body will still be producing dht and still killing hair folicles. even dr greco will tell you it is meant as an adjunctive treatment to propecia and rogaine.

 

if you are so worried about propecia, then the simple thing is do not take it. but i can guarantee u will have less hair at this time next yr. propecia is extremely safe and has been tested and used by dr's for a long time now. any ht doc on this site will tell u that most of their patients use the drug with no problems.

 

posting about what u should do over and over is not going to change anything. u know the facts now its up to you to decide what to do with them.

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Thanks HDude but I wasn't asking anything in my last post. I was just showing a patients results from dr Greco. And DR. Greco told me to use PRP before I decide to take propecia because of the prp having no sides. Anyways it looks like I will get on propecia because I am shedding everyday and it is coming from the same two places ( top corners). Even thought I know shedding is normal it is only occuring in two places for the most part for me and I know what that means...get on meds...

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I'm not sure why you would be afraid of propecia. I'm one the lower percentile that took it who had outstanding results for my crown area. No side effects. But as with other drugs, it lost its effectiveness after about 2 years.

 

Dutasteride is another story. That stuff was bad news.

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Severn,

I was/am afraid of taking propecia for two reasons 1) I hear it is not that effective for frontal (this is where I am thinning) and 2) I checked out propeciahelp.com and if that doesn't scare you then I don't know what will

 

did you see any effect of propecia on frontal scalp?

 

brent, the video is just where I described

 

"on the march 12th post of Dr. Grecos Blog.

 

http://doctorgreco.blogspot.com/"

 

scroll down to the march 12th post on that blog.

 

Don't know how real those results are but that video combined with Fellers pics are promising and making re-think prp with Dr. Charles and it looks like I am going to do it. Especially because I still have a lot of hair and my thinning are in small areas which makes me a great candidate, so they say.

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Yea, I saw it after i posted that ny....thanks... and for propecia not working in the front... it did with me and i'm sure others as well... i only know it did now bc ive been off it for 3 months and my front is starting to get thin again.

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As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I am having a PRP treatment with Dr. Feller tomorrow (Monday). My situation is this: I started wearing a frontal hair piece about 18 years ago after my hairline started receding. About 15 years ago, I had a very small trial ht session. I had less than 100 'mini' grafts placed just behind what would be my hairline zone. (The hairline zone itself is completely barren.) I ultimately decided to wait for improvements in ht technology and technique before going whole hog with a transplant. So I kept wearing a hair 'system.' Since then, my recession has progressed, although not dramatically. I am probably around a Norwood 2A, maybe getting to a 3. The hair directly behind where the mini-grafts were placed has markedly miniaturized and thinned, the hair directly behind that less so, and the hair on the coronal hump and back towards the crown is still pretty robust.

 

I have decided to get a transplant to my frontal third. Before I do, however, I want to see whether PRP treatment(s) can sufficiently shore up and fill in some of my miniaturized swaths of hair to possibly make it unnecessary to transplant into them, or at least allow for minimal transplantation into those zones. (We've got to preserve our precious donor hairs.) I also want to determine whether PRP can keep my relatively robust hair in good stead and maybe even give it a bit of an 'umph' without using drugs. And, finally, I want to see whether PRP can 'turbo charge' my donor area in anticipation of a transplant.

 

I was thinking about starting a new thread to diary my procedure and progress, if there is sufficient interest. Or I can just add to this thread. Members? Moderator?

 

Tomorrow should be interesting!

 

A.J.

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