Should I get a Hair Transplant?
I am 31 years old and I have lost most of my hair in the crown area.
Can it be restored with a hair transplant and will it be a right decision to go for
a transplant now or should I wait for more hair loss before going for transplant.
Thanks
Thank you for your question!
You’re 31 years old and you state that you’ve lost a lot of hair in your crown and you’re
asking whether or not you should have a hair transplant.
Well, you submitted some really good photos and I want to share with you an approach that
we have in our patients when someone like you comes in.
It is not question that male pattern hair loss especially in a lot of people starts
with significant loss in the crown area.
The reality is male pattern hair loss is affects the whole scalp.
But it is often expressed variably whether it’s frontal recession or temporal peaks
then the of course, the crown area, thinning out.
But when you look at hair, you notice that you didn’t really lose a lot of hair, the
problem is that the hair has been thinning.
You see, for a lot of people, hair loss is not just here today then gone tomorrow.
It’s actually a progression of hair thinning.
What happens is every growth cycle, as the hair sheds, the hair that comes back, comes
back thinner.
The challenge, as far as the question about the transplant, is two very important things:
one is the area that needs to be covered.
You have to understand that there’s only a limited amount of hair available from you
donor area.
The donor area is the area that’s the band of hair that you see the baldest mad you’ve
ever seen with the very narrow band of hair, that’s the true donor area.
The genetically resistant area that hair transplants are harvest from.
Now with the popularity of FUEs, that’s follicular unit extractions, hair is being
by design is harvested from outside of that donor area.
Which means those hairs are at risk of being lost.
But really, there’s a mismatch.
When you think of this space and just take a tape measure and look at the diameter and
the area of the crown, you’ll know that you need thousands of grafts in order to be
able to fill that area.
And reality is that the average hair transplant is no more than about 2000 grafts.
Without jumping in to the number of grafts necessary, also understand that that you have
existing hair.
Some hair transplant doctors generally don’t talk about is collateral loss.
When you take these hairs that are transplanted, you have to make multiple incisions, little
stabs.
And whether you use a tiny needle or joy implanter or blade, you’re by design traumatizing
existing hair and that existing hair will shed out and disappear.
So a lot of times, it’s like you take a few steps forward but then two steps back
and you end up with some improvement in density but you don’t get the coverage you desire.
Typically, to achieve density, you need more than one transplant.
But at 31, what are you dealing with?
You’re dealing with progression.
We also have a strategy for stabilization and reversal.
So in that spirit, I would suggest that you first explore medical options.
The medical options for hair loss treatment include minoxidil which is topically applied.
Minoxidil doesn’t really stop hair thinning progression.
It stops the shedding of hair or prolongs the growth cycle of thinning hair and therefore,
it looks like you have more hair than you actually would have without that minoxidil.
The other drug is finasteride.
Finasteride is well known because it has been a significant treatment for hair loss since
the late 90s.
Finasteride inhibits the enzyme responsible for the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone
of DHT and you probably aware in you research that certain people with male pattern hair
loss have DHT-sensitive hair follicles which thin.
So the logic is, you reduce the DHT, you can get reversal of that thinning process and
the hairs can come back thicker.
Now it also is, also as a note, in the original studies for finasteride, they were studied
in men who had crown thinning and they did very well.
So it is an effective drug.
At this time, a lot of men unfortunately are not taking finasteride because there looking
it up and seeing the potential for long term sexual side effects.
And that has left a real void in the medical management of hair loss.
So we have developed in our practice an alternative and it’s called Hair Regeneration.
Hair Regeneration is a method of using a material called extracellular matrix combined with
platelet-rich plasma.
Platelet-rich plasma is derived from your own blood and what we have developed is a
combination, a formulation that is customized and a method of delivery.
And through what is essentially, a use of advanced stem cell based wound healing material,
we have been able to successfully reverse hair thinning and it has been extremely effective
in the crown area.
So when people have existing thinning hair, in our practice, we get really excited because
we don’t talk about transplants.
We talk about medical therapy and Hair Regeneration.
With this treatment, we have 3-5 years of data and we have been able to help close to
a 100% of male pattern hair loss patients who come to us from all over the world.
So I’m just describing for you what we would do in our practice for someone like yourself.
I would advise against transplantation in the crown area.
It’s an area that nobody likes to see thin but we are advocating very aggressively that
people come when they still have existing hair.
There is certainly a lot of proven benefit from the hundreds or now probably thousands
of patients that we have treated from all over the world, that the earlier we get somebody
when they are thinning, the more volume they are able to get back.
And it’s been stable.
It doesn’t require reinjection at least for the 3-years in the majority of patients.
I have been doing some secondary injection to try to enhance further people with more
advanced hair loss but at the same time, it has become such a great option and I have
even gone to say that it even exceeds the results of any hair transplant.
The right patient who has a certain volume of thinning hair, there is no comparison.
You get so much more volume because nature already has the hairs there.
You don’t need to physically transplant them.
And no way can we, as surgeons, mimic exactly what nature has already created.
So it’s been quite the breakthrough and it is something that we have been very excited
about.
Certainly, I’m sharing with you this option because it has been so successful for us for
the past several years.
So once again, I would strongly advise against transplantation.
I would advise for consideration of medical therapy as well as this newer stem cell based
treatment called Hair Regeneration.
So with that being said, I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you
for your question!