Thank you for your question.
You submitted your question without a photo. And you’re asking actually a very common
question and the question you’re asking is can you prevent balding by undergoing hair
transplant even though both your mother side and father side of the family have strong
history of hair loss. Well, I can certainly answer this question even without your photo
since a question like this comes up every day in my practice.
A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial
plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I have been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island
for over 20 years. I am also the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers. This
is a system we developed as a non-surgical solution to help men and women with genetic
pattern hair loss who are progressively thinning and have an opportunity to do something about
that non-surgically. And this is a system that we developed doing hair transplant. And
what we were doing was, we trying to use a material called Acellular matrix combined
with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and we were able to find that not only were the hair transplants
healing better but also thinning hair became thicker and I’ll discuss some more details
about that later on.
So to begin with, it’s important for you to also determine whether or not you are experiencing
any significant hair loss. You know, a lot of times patients come to us who have family
histories where both sides of the family have very good hair and yet they have significant
hair loss. And it’s pretty much the issue. It’s not just the immediate family that
you can see and it’s generations preceding that can contribute to your genetic complement.
And therefore, it is certainly not necessarily an absolute that because both sides of your
family have significant histories of hair loss that you’re guaranteed to have hair
loss but the probability is fairly high.
Now that being said, I can certainly share with you the experiences of many people who
come to us and come to us from around the world for treatment who specifically tried
the strategy of having hair transplant as a way to address hair loss from a very early
age. We’ve had patients who’ve gotten hair transplant as early as age 20. And unfortunately,
they still continued to progress and I think it was very strange for them to get a transplant
at such as young age but more importantly, the counseling of a patient about the level
of improvement as well as the longevity of that improvement with hair transplant is critical.
As a general rule of thumb, we don't recommend hair transplant for anyone who is under the
age of 30. And it has to do essentially with the different levels of aggressiveness of
hair loss progression. We have patients who come to us who say to us that, let’s say
in their 40s, and they say that they started losing hair in their 20s and they can have
just moderate amount of hair loss. Comparably, we have patients who are already 30 and they
started losing hair in their 20s and they’re practically bald. And so what you have are
different levels of aggressiveness of progression.
And so my position is to be proactive and don’t go for a surgical solution as your
first-line of treatment. It is arguable that people who have gotten hair transplant at
a relatively young age and even if they kept on doing it, they went for a second transplant,
they went for a third transplant. Eventually what happens is, their donor area runs out.
Yes, some people may have thick body hair and they may be candidates for body hair transplantation
but I basically explain, you have to look at the geometry that the top of the scalp
has a large surface area and the donor area is considerably smaller. Therefore, there’s
a mismatch between the source and the place where you can transplant hair.
So my position and as someone who has done hair transplants for a long time, with Hair
Regeneration, I found essentially an important, for a large group of patients, a window of
opportunity while the hair is thinning to be able to manage their hair loss progression
by essentially, depending on the patient, use technologies or systems to reduce the
rate of progression such with a pharmaceutical like finasteride and stimulate hair growth.
With Hair Regeneration, we have learned that we can reactivate hair that’s not growing.
And this is a typical manifestation of progression of thinning. When hair is thinning, the hair
growth cycle gets shorter and the resting phases get longer. So in a given time, a lot
more hair is in a resting phase. So when we come along and do our treatment, a lot of
those hairs get reactivated and that’s what the regrowth part is. We can’t regrow hair
that’s not there. And further, we’re able to thicken thinning hairs and prolong the
lifespan and growth cycle of those hairs.
And we have been able to have a range of patients who have gotten benefit for years and years
after a single injection treatment but recognizing over the course of 8 years that there is a
range of level of aggressiveness amongst different patients, that we’ve developed a classification
system and that classification factors in current age, age of onset of hair loss, degree
of progression, rate of progression, other pharmaceuticals and other interventions patients
have undergone and other medical variables. And essentially, we figured out a treatment
plan.
So for a lot of patients especially if they’re younger, I explain that it’s better to delay
hair transplant for as long as possible. The outcomes of hair transplant and limitation
of hair transplant in a way is almost designed really to help people who are in the 40s and
older because with the smaller amount of areas that you can cover, the appearance can be
more consistent or age-appropriate as opposed to the desired outcomes of younger people.
So I think it is very important to understand this one principle. Hair loss is progressive
and a strategy that you want to employ given the limitations of technology is a management
strategy and a strategy where the outcome is to maximize coverage for as long as possible.
So learn more about pharmaceutical treatment as well as this new classification of regenerative
medicine technology that we can certainly take a lot of credit for helping establish.
And I think you’ll find that there are other options to employ more strategically before
taking the step towards a hair transplant.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.