Dr. Carlos K. Wesley: No Surgery. No Pills

[Artista]

Hello Dr. Wesley and hello to everybody here!!

[Winston]

Dear cardib,

Please take the time to read our Forum Posting Rules & Terms of Service. Members are responsible to learn and follow all rules and policies in order to participate on this forum. Violation of any of our polices will place the violator's account into moderation for evaluation without any prior notification.

To all members, let's please try to keep this thread on track and civil.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

[Ahab]

We are not a company, cardib. I am an individual practitioner. I don't think launching insults from behind a private avatar is the best way to advance an informative thread. I will, however, address other comments related to this topic.

For those who would like to learn more about PRP (how it works, how often it works, and for whom it may work best), I encourage you to watch the Grand Rounds Lecture I gave recently found on our PRP page.

Not everyone has hair characteristics that are most likely to benefit from PRP treatment, those should be evaluated in person by a physician. There are plenty of places that may offer free consults. A few of them are even performed by the physician. My one-hour consultations are not free because there are a myriad of treatments that are covered. Surgery is only discussed when it is in the patient's best interest.

The topical's efficacy is not directly proportional to its blood stream absorption. In this patient's case, he took oral finasteride for months and experienced profound side effects. He now uses a topical form of finasteride and has not had side effects.

Have you or anyone experimented with simply sticking needles into the scalp in the same way as when doing PRP, except without injecting any plasma? I'm wondering if it's the act of injury caused by the needle alone that is stimulating hair growth.

[VictimOfDHT]

PRP has been around long enough for us to know that it doesn't work that well and it sure is no miracle fix. It might help a little but I've yet to see someone getting a full head of hair after a PRP treatment. I can say the guy in the pic will NEVER get a full head of hair again even after 100 PRPs. Can you tell me otherwise.

The other thing, and I know it's already been mentioned by others but the comb-over is so obvious on this patient. That doesn't help your case.
Also, if this guy's using Minox and Fin, then isn't it possible they're the ones behind any improvements he is experiencing?

There might be some truth to PRP but I'm not convinced it does that much.

[Carlos Wesley, MD]

We are not a company, cardib. I am an individual practitioner. I don't think launching insults from behind a private avatar is the best way to advance an informative thread. I will, however, address other comments related to this topic.

For those who would like to learn more about PRP (how it works, how often it works, and for whom it may work best), I encourage you to watch the Grand Rounds Lecture I gave recently found on our PRP page.

Not everyone has hair characteristics that are most likely to benefit from PRP treatment, those should be evaluated in person by a physician. There are plenty of places that may offer free consults. A few of them are even performed by the physician. My one-hour consultations are not free because there are a myriad of treatments that are covered. Surgery is only discussed when it is in the patient's best interest.

The topical's efficacy is not directly proportional to its blood stream absorption. In this patient's case, he took oral finasteride for months and experienced profound side effects. He now uses a topical form of finasteride and has not had side effects.

[Billena]

Yes, the results in this case were pretty amazing!

[cardib]

Hi Abu,
Yes, his results were pretty remarkable!

are consults free

[Billena]

Hi Abu,
Yes, his results were pretty remarkable!

[Rizaan]

Clearly looks like a combover. I can almost imagine a gust of wind messing that up in seconds.
There definitely is regrowth but not as much as you're trying to show with the combover

[marklin]

It looks amazing! What is the concentration of topical Finasteride and Minoxidil? 0.1% Finasteride? 5% Minoxidil?

[DD1]

I'm not suggesting anything untoward is going on, but the first picture.. on the second picture, the hair is grown long on the lateral humps, and swept over to the midscalp. why?

When your before picture has it swept out of the way. It almost looks like your trying to improve the images to sell a product that doesnt really do much

[ATTACH=CONFIG]47420[/ATTACH]

That is exactly what i thought...a comb over.

[cardib]

are consults free?

@JohnMPB: Those are both correct physiologic effects (vasoconstriction & vasodilation) that effectively balance each other out. Neither of them, however, have a direct effect on hair growth. What we have found is that patients who may have experienced headaches, nausea, or dizziness (often due to vasodilation) are better able to tolerate minoxidil when a caffeine component is included.

@mlc2010: Here is a magnified image of the exact same point on the patient's scalp before and a few months after. Now, we do not expect every patient to respond as profoundly positively as this patient did to the combination of PRP, and our topical blend. We have been pleased to observe that combination therapy appears to raise the likelihood of patients' positive hair growth response within a few months after initiating treatment.

[JohnMPB]

The magnified photo does indeed show thickening of hair, I wish the hair styles were the same however so we could judge just how much of a global change there was.

However, topical fin is proven to only work to the extent that it is absorbed internally into the blood stream. Why did you just not have the patient take oral fin since it's easier and has long term safety and efficacy studies as compared to topical?

[LongWayHome]

The "after photo" is a classic comb-over.
The guy grew his hair on the sides where he still had and simply "moved" it to the center,
like many do without any product.

[Billena]

Hi Abu-yes, the result was really amazing. To say that the patient was thrilled would be an understatement!