Scalp Microinfusion (MMP): Using Tattoo Needles to Increase Hair Growth

Side note: By the way the acronym “MMP” comes from the Portugese term for this new experimental treatment.

You may have heard of micro-needling or ‘dermarolling’ as a treatment for hair loss, but now there’s a new more advanced scalp needling procedure called scalp microinfusion.

A solution is loaded into a machine like a tattoo gun and is then rapidly injected into the scalp skin. The needles go to a depth of 1mm to 1.5mm.

As with microneedling, it’s believed a regenerative effect is achieved by stimulating healing by causing many micro wounds in the scalp. The skin has to heal the tiny wounds and in doing so there is an increase in cell activity, blood flow and growth factors such as VEGF, which are known to increase hair growth.

So, could microinfusion, which combines topical drug delivery with needling be the most effective treatment for hair loss yet?

At first I thought this was not a treatment worth bothering with. Looking at it, I thought you’ll get just as good results by applying your topical and then immediately microneedling with a dermapen or Dermaroller type device.

However one of the before and after photo looks very good:

Source: Karger

This lady used microinfusion with a 0.5% Minoxidil solution, which seems like a very low dose of minoxidil. I’m not sure why they used such a low dose. But the results in this photo look very good. I believe this is after 4 monthly sessions of the treatment, which seems like barely any. That’s just once per month.

Can you do scalp microinfusion at home?

Theoretically anyone should be able to do it at home, just like anyone can do their own tattoos, if they have the right equipment. Would I try it? To be honest I don’t really see any additional benefit to doing this over doing normal microneedling. So I think, at least for now, I’ll stick to standard microneedling with a Dermaroller.

And if the before and after photo is really after four months, I’m a little bit suspicious of it. If new hairs had grown in that time they would be very small and we’d be able to see them sticking up at between 0.1 and 3 inches long. They would not be s long as the other hair, which will have take years to get that long.

The photos do look like they’ve been taken in the same light and from the same angle though, so perhaps the new smaller hairs have been pressed and stuck down using some form of gel or wax product. I’d be interested to see more results using this technique.