PRF hair treatment can promote natural hair growth for balding hair

• Insider visited Adarsh Vijay Mudgil, MD from Mudgil Dermatology to see how a PRF treatment works.
• Platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) from a patient's blood draw is injected into the skin for hair growth.
• Three treatments are recommended and results can show after the second or third treatment.

Adarsh Vijay Mudgil, MD: Platelet-rich fibrin is one of the newer treatments that is available for patients with hair loss.

So our wonderful patient today is a 25-year-old who is experiencing transient dramatic hair loss, which is called telogen effluvium. The first step is we have to draw our patient's blood. After we draw it, we spin it down in a centrifuge to separate out the blood into its various components. And what we're interested in harvesting is PRF, which is platelet-rich fibrin, which has a lot of nutrients and proteins that stimulate the stem cell in the hair follicles, which will stimulate hair growth and thicken existing hair.

When you pull the tube out, you're gonna see essentially, there's two layers that you're seeing. The top is sort of a yellowish fluid. That's the platelet-rich fibrin. Below that is everything else that's in blood. Your red blood cells, it's a very thick red, your white blood cells and platelets, all that stuff is on the bottom.

We use a very, very fine needle. We use a 32-gauge needle, which is super, super thin. And we also use a vibrating device that we use to trick the nerves on the scalp, so they're feeling the vibration rather than the stick of the needle. So it'll be about 60 shots, which are pretty evenly distributed around the crown of the scalp, going from the anterior part of the scalp all the way to the posterior part of the scalp, just behind the cowlick.

For our patients, we bolus them for the first three months, so they come once monthly for three months. And then in order to maintain the results, they come every four months thereafter. Then our patients start to notice a change between the second and third treatments generally. So once you've done those first three treatments, the results will generally last anywhere from four to six months. That's why giving your system another pop-up platelet-rich fibrin every four months keeps you ahead of the curve and helps you to maintain your results.

The beauty of platelet-rich fibrin is that it's literally the most homeopathic treatment that you could possibly have for hair loss. We're injecting your blood products back into you. So there's no way you could have an allergic reaction. There are really no side effects, there's nothing bad that can happen other than some transient tightness of your scalp for the first 12 to 24 hours.