Thank you for your question. You’ve asked a question without submitting a photo but
you describe your situation very well. You’re 50-years-old. You are thinning on top and
you have, as what you describe, a decent amount of hair on the back and the sides and you
are asking how successful is hair transplant and you would like to know in terms of percentages.
Well, I can certainly give you some guidance on how we do our consultation on patients
like yourself in our practice. A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic
surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I’ve
been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years and I am the founder of
TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers. This based on a technology that we developed during
hair transplantation to help maximize success. This is a non-surgical treatment for hair
thinning for both men and women and I’ll go over that as part of this discussion.
So when you describe a scenario of thinning and you are at the age of 50, basically the
question first is how good does your frontal hairline look? How slow has the progression
been? It sounds like being just 50-years-old that with the amount of hair that you have,
the onset was fairly later in your life and the progression has been slow. So then this
question arises - is hair transplant your best option? Well, this is a question we struggle
with for many years until past a few. Basically, when somebody came with a desire to have more
hair and before we developed Hair Regeneration, hair transplantation was the only option.
The challenge was how much coverage you can achieve and what would be the survivability
of the grafts. In the hair transplant field, doctors often compete by stating numbers of
grafts and then competing on the cost per graft. However, in the end of a year later,
it is really how many grafts survive and how much coverage do you have.
Basically, the challenge with someone with thinning hair is that you have existing hair.
When hair grafts are placed, putting aside graft survivability, existing hair will shed
permanently, a lot will. People will often refer to this as collateral damage and at
a certain point, there is a challenge in how much coverage we are able to achieve because
you are losing a certain of your thinning hairs. And with the understanding that the
thicker hairs that are from the permanent zone will give you a little bit of coverage
but in the end, density becomes problematic. This is a question that, basically when I
look at our results, I realized that there was an opportunity.
We developed a process called Hair Regeneration and it’s using a material called extracellular
matrix combined with platelet-rich plasma (PRP). What was originally the intention for
this technology was to help the hair grafts heal better and a side-effect was thinning
hairs became thicker. Well the decision point now in our practice is if someone has a reasonable
density as evaluated not just by what we see by our naked eye but by also microscopy, then
we actually tell people not to do hair transplant but to do Hair Regeneration. Why? Because
with Hair Regeneration, we are able to stop the progression of hair loss. We are able
to restore or reactivate what hasn’t been growing and we can induce hair that is thinning
to shed and to allow for thicker hairs to grow in.
I have observed with Hair Regeneration in the right candidate, the coverage can actually
exceed two hair transplants, so timing is very important and is an opportunity. And
before anyone goes through a hair transplant in our practice, we first aim for stabilization.
Even if they have advanced hair loss, we want to maximize stabilization as well as reactivation
and regrowth. The limitation of Hair Regeneration is the number of salvageable hair follicles.
So if somebody has a frontal hairline that is really receded, hair transplant is still
a very good option. But if they have existing hair, I always recommend Hair Regeneration.
So I think what you should do is first meet with doctors who have experience with this
technology as well as hair transplantation. I think you need to be cautious because in
the hair transplant field, a lot of people are trying to offer something similar to this
technology but mainly try to get you to do hair transplant. And in our practice what
we have essentially done is to eliminate the need for hair transplant for people who have
thinning hair because the reality is, once they have good results with Hair Regeneration,
they’re typically satisfied and they don’t move forward with other surgical procedures.
Now that has been our experience in our practice and we treat people who come from all over
the world with thinning hair for both men and women with over 99% success rate using
Hair Regeneration.
In terms of answering the question in terms of percentages, there is always a range and
is very individual so it is hard to give you an exact number because you have to look at
the context of the person’s level of hair loss as well as the overall medical situation
and the type of hair that is being transplanted. There is a lot of factors that contribute
to survivability and maximization of outcome. Now of course, in your situation, we actually
just help people first with Hair Regeneration and very often that is more than enough and
they avoid hair transplantation altogether.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!