Diagnosing the cause of hair loss before beginning LLLT therapy


Finding a Physician

We recommend that you contact a physician who has experience in diagnosing the cause of hair loss before beginning LLLT therapy either in the doctor’s office or at home, because other equally or more-effective treatments may be available to you; you may also be able to use these other treatments in conjunction with LLLT to enhance your results.

Combined therapy makes sense, as you may get complementary benefits from the different approaches, and one type of therapy may enhance the other.

Dermatologists are specifically trained in the diagnosis and treatment of hair loss, so consider starting with them. Check out www.aad.org for a list of dermatologists. Head to www.ishrs.org to find doctors who specialize in the surgical treatment of hair loss and who also have knowledge of LLLT treatments.

LLLT systems available in the doctor’s office involve the patient sitting under the machine, an experience similar to sitting under a hair dryer at the hair salon. The advantages of having laser done in the office include the following:

The disadvantages of the office-based system are:

Treatments are generally administered two or three times per week for 6 weeks and then once a week for the next 16 weeks. After observable hair growth occurs, periodic touch-ups may be needed to maintain the benefits of the treatment. Each treatment session takes approximately 20 minutes.

The doctor’s office based systems generally price the service for a three or six month course of therapy with up to three visits per week at a cost of a few thousand dollars.

As of this writing, the in-office systems have been issued an accession number by the FDA, meaning the products are classified as cosmetic products and have met the international laser standards for safety. However, they’re not yet FDA cleared for hair growth because scientific proof is lacking.

Manufacturers of the devices claim that studies with this type of machine have shown an 85 percent success rate in halting the progression of hair loss and up to a 39 percent increase in fullness, but again, scientific studies are lacking to confirm this. Office-based treatments come in two varieties: a system with fixed diodes and a system with moving diodes.

In the fixed or static system, approximately 100 diodes (an electrical device which has two wires leading into them to produce a flow of electricity, in one side and out the other), each emitting light at a wavelength of about 650mn, are set into an apparatus that sits over the person’s head.

The moving-diode system utilizes Rotational Phototherapy (RPT), in which 30 laser diodes rotate 180 degrees around the scalp. This process supposedly increases the contact of the laser energy with the hair follicles around the entire scalp and is potentially more effective in stimulating hair growth than other types of lasers. The “shade covering” caused by your hair may block the laser from reaching the scalp, but in the moving diode systems, a new position assures more laser penetration through the hair and into the scalp.

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This article was sent to us by: Lionel Venera at 06192010

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