Step by step overview:

Hi, I’m doctor Rob Jones of Toronto, Ontario. What I’m going to do in the next few minutes in this short video is demonstrate a Platelet Rich Plasma / PRP therapy.

The people that are most going to benefit from this are people either with thinning hair, with terminal hairs on top of their head, or it’s also been used on patients with alopecia areata.

I was down to visit Dr. Greco a few weeks ago and saw some amazing results. I’ve also talked with Dr. Choy in Vancouver who is using a different technique, and hope to visit him in the next few weeks to observe his technique.

But today we’re going to be using Dr Greco’s technique, and hopefully we’ll sort of show a short video clip of each step of the way so you can see what it’s like to have the procedure done.

The area i’m going to have treated is my crown area and just in front of my crown. It’s a multi-step procedure so we’ll show a short video clip of each stage.

The first step of the procedure is getting the blood out. Now what we do is with the butterfly is just put it into a peripheral vein and just draw out about 60cc of blood.

And thats what we’re doing here. As you can see Trisha is now removing the blood.

Very simply and painless.

The next step is to put the blood into the centrifuge as Trisha is doing here.

So the next stage in the procedure is the numbing of the top of the head. So Linda is using just probably about 10ccs of Carbocaine just to numb up the top of the head so she can roll it and put in the PRP. This is fairly painless. You might feel a little pin prick, but not too bad.

This is a picture of the Platelet Rich Plasma just after its been separated. Now, as you can see, the platelet portion is the small white layer just above the blood, above the red blood cells, and below the plasma.

Now what Trish is going to do is inject a spinal needle to withdraw a portion of the plasma, so when we mix the platelets with the plasma, it’s more concentrated.

The next step is to use the roller to cause microabrasions to the top of the scalp. Linda is now rolling the top of my scalp. It’s painless because its been numbed with—

and the last part of the procedure is to inject the Platelet Rich Plasma, which Linda is going to do now.

We’ve already fixed it up and put it into a syringe. We have about 6cc that we’ll inject into the area at the top of my head in the crown area.

I’ve now finished the PRP procedure and i thought i’d just show people what the top of my head looks like so you can see what the area looks like immediately after the
procedure. It’s been probably 20 minutes — half hour since the treatment was completed.

Hi I’m now 18 hours after my PRP treatment and i’ve washed this morning, so I’ve taken away any signs of the treatment I had yesterday. I just like to sort of demonstrate how clean this procedure is and how easy it is to return to work the day after. As you can see from the top of my head, I’ve had a shower, cleaned off the PRP, it’s impossible to tell that I’ve had any treatment done.

So i could return to work without any difficulty today. There’s a little bit of tenderness and numbness on the top of my head, but beyond that, I feel perfectly normal and perfectly able to return to my normal daily routine.

If you’re interested in following how my progress is in the next few months, go to my site, drrobertjones.com, and my progress as well as the progress of other patients will be closely monitored through my blogs.

Read More about Platlet Rich Plasma on Tressless > Learn

Joseph Greco, PhD, describes his positive experience coat­ing grafts with PRP as well as placing the gel into recipient sites and the donor area. In a personal communication, Greco told me that he recently saw two patients in whom PRP was used in their transplant 6 months prior. “My first impression was that they looked as though they were at 9 to 10 months rather than 6 months. The transplanted hair appeared more mature, with more aesthetic density than most patients do at that time.” Of course, this is anecdotal data but from some­one with as much as experience as Joe, I have to put some stock in that.

Link to PDF

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 shit 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?

More from Joseph Greco here

thanks, misterc