PRP - Know All About It!

Hello everyone,

I am Dr. Sukriti Sharma. After having received a lot of queries regarding PRP, who can take it, when can take it I have decided to talk about platelet rich plasma which we commonly known as PRP. So PRP is a recent boon, is the aesthetic and the hair restoration medicine. A lot of celebrities have made it very popular by posting a lot of pictures and they are commonly calling it as Vampire facials. So when you cover it under certain headings let's start with the first heading which is: what is PRP? So as the name suggests it is platelet rich plasma where we take out the platelets from your own blood, we concentrate it to release the growth factors which are there inside your blood. Now, these growth factors help in enhancing the stem cells in your body and therefore increases the number of hair, helps in forming new collagen and so on and so forth. So this is what PRP is. Then next question you will ask me how is this PRP prepared. So, PRP preparation is a simple procedure but time consuming.

Here we take your 8 to 10 ml of your blood, it's taken in specialised tubes, some of them call it the ACDA vials. Now these 8 to 10 ml of the blood is taken and then put in a centrifuge machine which takes around 20 to 30 minutes to prepare it and at the end we get three layers of our blood. The lowermost layer consists of the red cells, the middle layer consists of the platelets; which is rich in the growth factors and the upper layer is the plasma. So this middle layer of platelets is taken into 1 ml syringes and then it is injected in the area of concern. For example, if you suffer from hair fall around 0.1 ml of this PRP in 1cm square area is injected into your hair loss area and similarly if you are concern is anti aging then for vampire facial the PRP is injected into your face along with the derma roller therapy. You might ask me then what is the use of PRP and what is the right age to go for PRP.

For different concerns there are different indications and ages where we can go for PRP for example, for hair fall and hair loss if you feel it is excessive and you want something natural, then yes PRP is the right choice for you. It can be done at any age. Then next is for anti aging, people who are in their late 20s, mid 30s or early 40s also, if you are concerned about dark circles, under eye pigmentation, facial pigmentation like melasma; PRP works really well. If you are concerned about the sagging of skin, nasolabial folds PRP can work for you. It is found to have slight effects in stretch marks which is a very resistant condition. For medical concerns like ulcer healing it can be diabetic ulcer or other non healing ulcer PRP has shown to have wonderful results. It is used in other fields of medicine, dentistry and orthopaedics also to relieve pains but that is covered under certain sections. You might ask me then how much it will cost, what are the number of sessions and when to go for it. It requires at least 6 sessions of PRP initially to begin with, it can be done at 3 weekly to one monthly interval.

As far as the costing is concerned there are various methods of PRP preparation which changes its cost, therefore there are few US FDA specialised tube which take less time but has shown to have proven and good effect, for that it might cost something in between 5000 to 10000 to 15000 and then there is a manual indigenous method of preparation which has equally good results but takes more time and it at least requires 30 to 40 minutes for the whole PRP procedure and then this method costs between 3000 to 4000 rupees. Then, what are the other uses of PRP and in hair what is best: transplant or PRP? This is a common question. PRP is an add-on to your hair transplant. It does not form new hair in completely gone out areas, there transplant works. But to decrease the hair fall, to make your hair fall stop at that particular point and as an additive to transplant PRP can be added. Even during the transplant we put your grafts of the hair inside the PRP solution so that it increases the viability of your graft and also be injected into the areas where the graft would be put which is the donor site as well as the recipient site so that your graft stays on for longer which increases the productivity of grafts.

Thank you so much.