Are US Companies Making Generic Propecia Now?

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

According to the WiKi, the patent of Propecia in US has expired in Nov. 2013. Would you explain updates about generic products of finasteride? Is there any US company that has started manufacturing it?

Thanks

Generic Propecia (finasteride 1mg) has been available here for about a year and a half, though it was exclusively made by Dr Reddy’s until around mid-2013. There’s a list of Propecia manufacturers at Drugs.com that have FDA approval, and while some of them might be US-based, I’m not sure if the medication is manufactured in plants elsewhere in the world.

Almost all of our patients have started using the generic, but the prices have not come down to levels I expected. The lowest price is still had by dividing a 5mg generic Proscar pill into quarters, though your doctor will need to prescribe this higher dose with instruction to cut the pill.

Tags: propecia, proscar, finasteride, hairloss, hair loss, generic medication

Not Hair Loss News – Early Chemo Helps Prostate Cancer Patients Live Longer?

/by William Rassman, M.D./1 /

Snippet from the article:

Men diagnosed with prostate cancer will often put off chemotherapy, with their doctor’s approval. But new research suggests that men who get chemotherapy early on may actually live longer.

Typically, men with prostate cancer will start their treatment with simply active surveillance of their tumors, before starting hormone therapy. Men will undergo chemotherapy only when their tumors become resistant to hormone therapy. But a recent clinical trial found that men treated early with chemotherapy lived longer than men who underwent the standard treatment.

The clinical trial randomized 790 men with recently diagnosed prostate cancer into two groups. One followed the standard treatment guidelines, and the other received chemo right away alongside their hormone therapy. The men who underwent chemotherapy lived over a year longer than the men on the standard treatment regime.

Read the rest — Early Chemo May Help Men With Prostate Cancer Live Longer, Study Says

The study was deemed among the most noteworthy of the thousands of studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Tags: chemotherapy, chemo, prostate cancer, disease

Designing a Frontal Hairline with SMP

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

I think I’m what one would call a Norwood 7 balding pattern. There is no hair almost throughout my head and its been years since I had a hairline. I am concerned that if I have scalp micro pigmentation, that everyone I know will be able to tell that I had something done. My temple points are also not there, as the hair that is left does not go past my ears.

What has been your experience with SMP for this type of most extreme balding?

We have done Scalp MicroPigmentation (SMP) on many people like you. The detectability of it depends upon many factors, especially your hair color. If it is jet black, then the SMP will make an appreciable difference in your look; however, what I have found in doing hair transplants and SMP procedures over the years is that unless what you see looks abnormal, many people will not detect that you had anything done. The key to undetectability is a normal, natural look, especially in the hairline.

What I’ve seen on various SMP websites where the operators only know one style of look, the hairline appears abnormal, with harshly straight edges, like it was shaved with a straight razor. That type of look is not normal and if you don’t believe me, look at some of the people who walk around you at shopping centers and try to find the shaved frontal leading edge of the hairline on anyone with normal hair. The hairline must be designed with an irregular frontal leading edge, and that type of skill is something we developed after performing thousands of hair transplant procedures.

I have always been amazed how poorly hairlines are designed, even amongst the hair transplant community; nevertheless, our experience in creating hairlines makes our skills far beyond what a tattooist has in performing SMP on a man like you. To see what I am talking about, look at the following hair transplant in a Norwood class 7 patient, and note that this is a completely transplanted hairline done in the baldest of men. Proper SMP should be just the closely cropped look of that hairline.

Tags: hairloss, hair loss, smp, scalp micropigmentation, temples

In the News – Goodbye to the Comb-over?

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

Snippet from the article:

TrumpThe dodgy seventies comb-over made famous by personalities like Donald Trump, Christian Bale in American Hustle and Bobby Charlton has been abandoned by modern men, according to new research.

Let’s be honest, the hairstyle, which saw men grow their side patches and sweep the extra hair over their bald patch, was never a good look. While men thought they were hiding a multitude of sins, in many cases they were actually drawing more attention to their lack of fuzz.

But modern men seem to have come to their senses. A study, by Crown Clinic in Manchester, reveals that the 21st century chap is opting for new methods to hide his lack of hair including shaving, covering up and going under the knife for transplants.

Read the rest — Death of the comb-over

This was just a survey of 1000 people by a hair clinic in the UK, but I’d agree that the comb-over is becoming less common than it seemingly was in past decades. With new surgical and non-surgical treatments available, men are able to take control of their hair loss rather than just styling the limited amount of hair they have.

It also helps that the shaved head look is fashionable, allowing men the option to just shave it all off or go for SMP to have that closely trimmed look.

Tags: hairloss, hair loss, combover, comb-over, balding, trump