Categorizing Hair Loss Treatments: 1, 2, 3 and Go!

Hair Loss Treatments are Not Equally Safe, Affordable, Feasible nor Effective: A Look at the S.A.F.E Principle

Every hair loss condition has multiple treatment options. Some of the treatment options are unlikely to help. Some of the options are more likely to help. Some options are safe and some options are not very safe. Some are more expensive than others.

When one thinks about all the hair loss treatments that exist for a given condition, it’s important to be able to arrange or sort all of the various treatments according to whether they should be offered to patients first (so called first line treatments) or only offered to patients only if the first set of treatments don’t help (so called second and third line treatments).

All treatment options are not equal. For every treatment we need to think about its safety, affordability, feasibility of use and effectiveness and then decide if it deserves a spot as a first line treatment or a second line treatment or a third line treatment. I call this the “S.A.F.E. Principle” which reminds us to always consider four things: safety, affordability, feasibility of use and overall effectiveness.

See Prior:

PRIMUM NON NOCERE AND THE MODERN S.A.F.E. PRINCIPLE

DOES ONE ALWAYS START WITH THE MOST EFFECTIVE TREATMENT?

If there are 26 treatments for a given hair loss condition, one needs to go through the process of categorizing those 26 treatments into first line, second line and third line options.

“Can’t I just know one treatment ?” one might ask. Not really. The key to effective communication is being able to discuss a treatment and discuss some of the alternatives and why they are not favoured.

There will always be some debate as to how to categorize or sort treatments. But one thing is not to ever be debated: a highly effective and very safe and extremely affordable treatment will almost always be a first line treatment and an expensive and fairly ineffective treatment will always be third line treatment. Everything else will be somewhere in between.

We generally start with first line treatments when treating hair loss and then go on to second and third line treatments if the first line treatments do not help or do not help enough.