Which is Better For Hair Restoration: PRP or a Hair Transplant?

Today I wanted to talk about the difference between using PRP for regrowing hair versus a hair transplant. So what are the pros and cons of these different approaches? Well, first of all, a hair transplant is quite an expensive procedure. It’s a surgical procedure and they take a little band of hair follicles from the back of the head and move them forward and transplant them into various spots on the top of your scalp. Now, this is a surgical procedure, so there will be some post-operative pain and a little bit of downtime. The procedure itself is fairly expensive, multiples of thousands of dollars, and there are only few select locations that would offer a hair transplant. After a hair transplant, you would be provided with a prescription for a solution to apply to your scalp, to prevent the hair that’s newly transplanted from falling out.

The difference with a PRP treatment is the cost is substantially less. The procedure comes with essentially no downtime at all, and it’s relatively painless. In fact, I’ve had it done myself and it feels kind of like a gentle scalp massage. Now, after a PRP treatment, you would be provided with the same kind of a prescription for a topical lotion to help to prevent the new hair from falling out.

Another important difference is, with the hair transplant, the follicles are placed in little plugs. Which are like little divots in the scalp where the hair follicles are stuck in, so they tend to grow in sparse little clumps. Making it look a little bit obvious that you have had a transplant. With PRP, we stimulate a whole host of hair follicles so the hairs grow a little bit more spontaneously from the normal follicles where they normally would grow.

What we see with PRP is about a 25% increase in hair density. So there’s a notable increase in hair density, that is readily apparent after a few months of growth. And it’s a totally natural appearance because the hairs grow in where all of the normal follicles would be. So I think you end up with a more natural appearance with PRP and it’s considerably cheaper.

So those are the substantial differences between a hair transplant versus a PRP treatment. Now, keep in mind that we do recommend that you would have a minimum of three PRP treatments approximately one month apart. And the benefits persist for at least a year or two.

For further information on PRP Treatments for hair restoration, please give my office a call all today at 250-717-3200.