How many grafts do I need for my hair transplant?
I am 23 years of age.
I have lost 8o% of hair in the frontal part of my head.
My hairline is damaged and my hair is still falling from the upper part.
I want to have hair transplant.
I want to know how many grafts I need .and which technique will be better: FUE or FUT?
Thank you for your question!
You’re 23 years old and you submitted a photo of the top of your head and you’re
asking about how many grafts you’ll need and you’ve described that you’re continually
losing hair.
So, I will explain to you how we treat patients like yourself when they come to our practice.
You already answered your question about your age and the degree of your hair loss and it
seems about overall categories of patients, you fall in the category of a younger person
who’s had an early onset and whose had a rapid progression.
So I’ll give you an understanding of what the current technology and what we do in our
practice for someone like yourself.
First of all, it’s perfectly understandable that you’re asking the question about how
many grafts.
When you do research online about hair loss, you’re going to be seeing a combination
of different options but they fall in to categories of oral pills and supplements, shampoos of
various kinds, medications such minoxidil and finasteride and then a lot about hair
transplant.
And the hair transplant industry has been all about numbers of grafts, cost per grafts
and unfortunately, there is not as much open disclosure about the limitations.
So let’s start with the situation you’re in so you could understand why I’m saying
what I’m saying.
When you think about hair transplant, there is almost an assumption that you can fill
the top of the scalp with hair from the back of the scalp because there’s plenty there
to do that.
Reality is there isn’t enough especially when you have this much hair loss, you don’t
have enough to make a significant enough difference to create the volume that is desirable for
someone in your age group.
As men get older, 30s, 40s, 50, we refer to it as the concept of rule of decades.
In your 20s, 20% of your contemporaries have hair loss like yourself while 80% have a lot
of hair.
Now many years ago, it was pretty much and is probably is still, but it was never advised
to really do a hair transplant to a young male in their 20s especially early 20s because
there was going to be a lot more time of potential progression and likely progression to the
point where it may be too difficult to provide enough grafts to cover the area that they
desire.
When you reach your 40s and 50s, 40-50% of your contemporaries have hair loss and the
needs of a man of their 40s or 50s or beyond are very different.
For example for someone in their 40s or 50s, they have thin little spot in the middle,
it breaks up the top of the scalp in terms of the framing of the face and it’s acceptable
and it’s fine.
It’s a look and a lot of guys totally carry that out very well.
In your 20s, you want more than that.
So I would say I would not advise that you have a hair transplant at all.
The options that you should look at are things to help stabilize your hair loss and prevent
progression.
Those options include finasteride which is an oral drug.
Chances are you already learned about it and what we’re seeing in our practice, men in
their 20s almost categorically do not want to take finasteride because of the fear of
long term permanent sexual side effects.
This is based on studies done in the past few years that appear to demonstrate this
to occur on a small percentage of men.
But we’re seeing in our practice that men in their 30s, 40s or 50 are also do not want
to take finasteride.
The other option is something that we developed in our practice and we call it Hair Regeneration.
Briefly, this is a concept that we developed based on observations made from the behavior
of hair after the application of a wound healing material called extracellular matrix.
What we have done is we have combine extracellular matrix with platelet-rich plasma, this is
derived from your own blood and is like catalyst with the active growth factors and cells needed
for wound healing.
When combine in a specific way customized to you and delivered in a certain way and
we developed a method, we’re able to reverse significantly thinning hair and restoring
a lot of volume and thickness.
Now much of this depends on what stage of hair loss you’re at, how quickly your hair
loss is progressing and then there are certain other factors that we also look into individually.
For example, people with coarse hair seems to do very well probably because coarse hair
covers more scalp.
Ultimately, it’s all about scalp coverage than it is about numbers of individual hairs.
It’s commonly accepted in our profession that when you first notice hair loss, you
already lost 50% of your hair.
So your strategy should not, I would advise, be not about transplantation.
We have many examples of patients with a recent popularity of FUEs, we have patients who have
come who have limited amount of hair on the front after doing like 1500 FUE grafts and
then having progressive thinning on the top of your head and it just looks strange.
It just doesn’t look right.
So, with that understood, it is always better to have no hair than it is to look like you’re
pluggy and have scars and this something that we know this from doing 20 years of doing
hair transplants of patients who have had them before and have either limited hair available
or get limited results.
There are many factors that affect the outcome of a hair transplant but since you’re so
young, my advice is don’t even consider a hair transplant.
Look in to the options of medical therapy, Hair Regeneration, learn more about it and
then deiced what areas to pursue and to try.
Unfortunately, time is not on your side and you need to make decisions sooner rather than
later.
With Hair Regeneration, we know the earlier we treat someone, the better their results
are and we’ve treated men as young as 18 years old who have the onset very early based
on a family history and a pattern.
And I can say, I was able to stop it and re-thicken hair very quickly as long as we caught them
early.
The earlier we catch them, the better it is.
So that being said, I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you
for your question!