A short video conversation between Dr. Robert Whitfield (board-certified plastic surgeon) and Dr. Philip Ube (functional medicine doctor) about hair loss treatments for men in Austin. They discuss medical options (Rogaine, finasteride), in-office procedures like PRP injections and microneedling, and a surgical hair restoration technique—follicular unit extraction using the SmartGraft system—highlighting its benefits, minimal downtime, and potential need for repeat treatments in extensive cases.
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Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Whitfield here in Austin. I'm a board certified plastic surgeon here.
With Dr. Philip ub functional medicine doctor here with Dr. Whitfield.
We're going to talk about hair loss today for men.
Okay. So as many of you men know, hair loss is pretty common and there's limited options that you have at home as far as Rogaine and finasteride, which doesn't really work that well. So there's other options that you can do. And as far as what I can do from the medical standpoint is we can use PRP injections, which you may not have ever heard of that before. It's just where we draw blood, spin it down and, and then we isolate the growth factors and platelets and actually inject it into the scalp itself in order to stimulate new growth. The hair follicles get thicker. That's one of the options we can do. We can also do microneedling at the same time, which is basically just a tiny needle that goes in and in and out, in and out, in and out really quickly. Stimulates kind of healing and inflammation in order to regenerate some of those follicles. That's about what we can do in the medical field. But we can also combine it with some of the things you do. What are some of those things you have for.
Right. We're really trying to develop a great market for male aesthetics. And I think we're going to start with hair. And it's a really complicated subject. People have low self esteem because of hair loss. Dr. Ube has discussed in his practice the limitations that the medical treatments have. But there's a new technique, follicular unit extraction. It's a mouthful provided by smart graft. So the technology is great in that a small amount of suction is used to extract the follicles from the back of the head. From a good area of hair bearing to hair loss areas, usually in males in the front and females on the sides. There's really no downtime with it. So there's no wound. There used to be a scar with the strip method. You had to use the scalpel, take it off, extract the units and then re implant them with this method. The little suction device sucks the follicles up, it transports them into the unit, the unit bathes them. We can use PRP to help bathe it as well, controls the temperature. We feel like it provides great environment for the follicles before reimplantation. And then within a couple days the area where they're extracted is healed and about eight days, the hair grows over it and you don't see anything. So for busy, active people, it's a great option.
Is this something that we do multiple times or one and done?
Well, we hope it would be one and done, but if it's an extensive area of hair loss, then we may need to repeat the treatment. Or some people come back for improvement in their sideburn, their anterior hairline. Females. I see a lot of females getting tattooed eyebrows, which is a little startling, but this is so precise. You can actually recreate the eyebrow. Oh, cool.
From the back of your head. Yeah.
I think for males who are very, very stubborn about going to physicians and getting help, this is men.
Us stubborn.
No. This is a really excellent opportunity to use smart graft and be smart about your hair loss and improve it.
