Am I eligible for Hair Transplantation?
I am losing my hair from the last 5 years.
In early days, my hair falls a lot but with passage of time it stopped.
Now I am facing diffusing hair pattern baldness.
Last year, I tried Minoxidil 5% with logihair (mouh medicine) but didn’t see any considerable
change.
Now I am considering hair transplant surgery, and I need advice whether I am a good candidate
for HT as per my hair baldness pattern and as per my age (24).
Many people are saying that I should wait for my late 20’s for HT.
Thank you for your question.
24 years old and you stated in your question that you’ve been losing hair for the past
5 years and that it’s diffusely thinning and you’ve submitted some really good photos
that certainly convey that.
The question you are asking is that are you a candidate for hair transplant and that whether
or not to do this in your late 20s.
Well, I think that you have to understand the limitations of hair transplantations and
as we continue this discussion I’m going to share with you something that we do in
our practice that’s different from hair transplantation that may probably be applicable
to you.
So let’s first understand what’s going on.
You have male pattern hair loss this is probably genetic it runs in families.
And the medications you’ve been taking certainly may help somewhat but in the United States
there are two FDA approved drugs for hair loss: one is Minoxidil which is topical and
it tends to prolong the growth cycle of thinning hair so that it appears to last longer and
make the scalp look like it has a little more coverage and the other is Finasteride.
Finasteride is known as a blocker of DHT production caused by an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase.
In a specific segment of male pattern hair loss, Finasteride can be effective in slowing
down the progression.
The problem is that a lot of younger people even being on Finasteride will continue to
thin.
Now in term of hair transplantation, when you are in you late 20’s the expectation
of hair transplantation is very different than when you are in your 40’s and 50’s.
This is just the realities that comes from experience of 20 years of practice that the
rule of decade is unfortunately is not favorable.
When you’re in your 20s, only 20% of men have significant hair loss while 80% have
lots and lots of hair.
If you do a transplant the area that you need to cover is far greater and that’s an absolute
mismatch between the area that needs to be covered and the limitations of the donor area.
To understand that truly, just think of the baldest man you can think of and look at how
narrow that strip of hair is.
Right now a lot of people are doing Follicular Unit Extractions or FUEs and they’re making
openings far above and below the safe donor area.
And I sometimes refer to this as being an approach were it’s really a rental were
the hair is being transplanted but it’s not going to stay there because it’s genetically
programmed to thin out and disappear.
It’s a controversial statement but you can’t argue with physiology.
And so in terms of the results of a transplant for a 20 year old or someone in their 20’s
you have to think about where the hairs can be placed and usually it’s limited to the
frontal hairline to define the face and in order to get a really good result you usually
need more than one session in order to get density and a more natural appearance.
In our practice we have been performing a procedure which is not surgical and in fact
we’ve literally flipped around the approach we for hair loss and that is a method called
hair regeneration.
What we have developed is the use of a material for wound healing called extra cellular matrix
that is combined with your own blood product called platelet rich plasma.
This combination of a formulation and a delivery method is something we’ve been working on
and have developed to a level that we are actually scaling to reverse thinning hair.
So instead of transplanting, what we’re doing is we’re taking people with thinning
hair and stopping the progression and getting the hair to not thicken.
Now this is a revolutionary procedure unfortunately that’s kind of a cliché but it really has
been.
I’m enthusiastic because it’s made such a difference for patients who come to use
from all over the world.
So the reason why it’s been quite the remarkable discovery is that the material was never intended
for hair loss so it was actually intended for wound healing and it was an accidental
discovery that thinning hair became thicker when this was used for an incision healing
process in the donor area.
So long story short, we’ve developed this over the past several years and we have 5
years of data showing people that 99% of patients do not need re-injection at this time and
we’ve been treating with male and female pattern hair loss.
So for anyone who comes to us who’s young like you and comes with this progression of
thinning hair we always, unless there’s any reason not to, we always recommend hair
regeneration.
And that being said, once the hair is thickened and you have good coverage the way I see it
is that if even if you want a transplant, when you deal with the limited area of the
donor then you can be much more strategic when you have a lot more hair.
I always say that although a transplant can move a thousand hairs or two thousand hairs,
when you have thousands of hairs in the scalp that are thinning not bald but thinning then
we can literally multiply the effects of a hair transplant.
And that’s why we are so enthusiastic about this procedure because it really is a game
changer for our patients who come to us from all over the world for this procedure.
So I would advise you to learn about hair regeneration.
I think that in addition to that consider the medical options I discussed in terms of
the Finasteride and the Minoxidil which you are already taking.
And learn more about these options before you make that next step with the hair transplant.
In my practice, if you are a patient of ours we would do hair regeneration first and then
consider the hair transplant somewhere around 18 months or we might even consider a secondary
injection this is something that we also have in development.
So I hope that was helpful.
I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.