Am I eligible for Hair Transplantation?
After Hair Transplantation, will any shock hair loss come to me?
Thank you for your question!
Your question has two parts: one is, are you a candidate for hair transplantation, and
two, will you develop shock loss.
The photos you submitted are actually very good and gives me a very good sense of what
level of hair loss you have.
What you didn’t include in your question is you age and the rate of your hair loss
progression as well as what type of result you are expecting from a hair transplant.
I’m going to make assumptions because I think that after 20 years of doing hair transplant
surgery, as a board certified cosmetic surgeon in doing all types of different surgeries,
that I can certainly get a sense of what you want.
And usually, when patients come to us, they want all their hair back and they want to
cover-up everything.
So let’s start by understanding what your situation is and maybe we can work with certain
assumptions since these information were not provided.
First of all, if you were younger and when I say younger, I mean 35, and you’ve had
a relatively rapid progression of hair loss, then you have to understand that a hair transplant
does not stop hair loss.
A hair transplant is a very straightforward concept.
It’s taking hair from the permanent zone which is not subject to hair thinning and
that’s that narrow band of hair that you see in the baldest man you’ve ever seen,
it’s that narrow band.
That’s the permanent zone or otherwise called the genetically resistant area or the donor
area.
These hairs are not subject to hair thinning.
Therefore they can be transplanted, moved from one place to another.
The math doesn’t simply work to cover-up an entire scalp with that donor area.
So if you look at people who had hair transplant, where do they mostly have their hair grafts,
in the front.
The idea is to frame the face and to put the grafts in a place where it will allow the
face to be framed.
When you are younger, you want lots of hair.
As you get older, 40s and 50s, more than 40-50% of your contemporaries don’t have a lot
of hair therefore it’s okay to have hair loss socially and otherwise and be able to
handle a limited amount of coverage.
What we have done in our practice is we have actually created an alternative to hair transplant
we call Hair Regeneration as a way to treat hair loss with a hair transplant.
But before going further into that, also to understand is that what are you doing to stabilize
your hair loss?
Are you using any medical therapy?
Are you using finasteride?
Are you using minoxidil?
These drugs, there’s plenty information about them out there.
Unfortunately, finasteride, a lot of men, especially those coming to see us don’t
want to take finasteride out of fear of long term sexual side effects.
So it really limits your options for stabilization.
The Hair Regeneration treatment we’ve developed came out of a stem cell-based wound healing
technology.
And what we have been able to successfully do is without depending on finasteride or
minoxidil, do an injection into the scalp that stops the progression of hair thinning
and now allows the hairs to become thicker.
We have approximately 5 years of data.
We have hundreds and hundreds of patients coming to us from all over the world who we
follow very closely.
We see our patients every 3 months and I can tell you having done hair transplant for 20
years, that the results of Hair Regeneration in the right candidates far exceeds not just
one but two hair transplant surgeries.
Nature already has the hairs in place.
It just needs to get thicker again.
And when it’s thicker, the density and the coverage can really be impressive.
So understanding that you do have an alternative and you should explore options with medical
therapy as well as new technologies such as Hair Regeneration.
To address the question about shock loss, I can say shock loss is intrinsically a part
of every hair transplant surgery.
When you are creating trauma to the scalp from surgery, we’re making thousands of
incisions and you’re having 7-8 hours of surgery on average, you’re going to have
telogen effluvium or shock.
It doesn’t mean you’ve lost the hair permanently but it does mean that there will be loss of
existing hair so you can look worse before you look better so that’s one of the big
negatives of transplants.
Transplants are very much oversold and the limitations are understated.
So the limitations of the donor area, the presence of shock loss and the density and
yield of transplants have made transplants very frustrating for both patients and doctors.
And so for us in our practice, Hair Regeneration has been this remarkable god-sent to help
patients who are experiencing progression and are frustrated even after they’ve had
hair transplant done elsewhere and they continue to thin.
We’ve helped people to avoid a second transplant.
We’ve helped people while they are healing from a transplant have come in to have the
injection to help them heal the grafts and the donor area and seems to accelerate the
healing process.
So it really is remarkable.
We are kind entering a new age of medical care which is stem cell-based.
And interestingly, this is your own body’s adult stem cells.
It has nothing to do with fetal or otherwise external stem cells.
It’s from yourself.
So in summary, explore other options.
Yes shock loss can happen to you if you choose to have a transplant but get more information
before you move forward with a transplant.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!