Thank you for your question.
You submitted a photo of the top of your head and you're asking if you are eligible for
a hair transplant.
You state that you're 30 years old and your hair has been thinning for 10 years.
Well I can certainly help you with this question.
I'm a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon.
I've been performing hair transplant surgery for over 20 years.
I'm also the developer and founder of Tricostem Hair Regeneration and hair regeneration centers,
which is a non-surgical solution for hair loss, which may have some relevance to your
question.
I've been in practice for over 20 years.
So the question of whether or not you're eligible for a hair transplant really first depends
on what you want to achieve.
Now, the reality is that most people who go for a hair transplant desire full coverage
of the top of their head, and the marketing of hair transplants unfortunately leads people
to believe that that is plausible.
But the reality is, the donor area that is the source of the grafts for the hair transplant
is very limited and very narrow.
So regardless of whether or not you're doing FUTs or strip method, FUEs, robot technology,
whatever it is you're doing for transplantation, you're still limited by the number of hairs
available in the donor area.
I'll tell you that as most men get older, when I say older—40’s to 50’s—the
common or more accepted social norm of hair loss allows for results which are more consistent
with their particular age range.
So that a man in his forties, if he's going to have a hair transplant, will be fine with
having hair placed right in the center, kind of like a man who has thinning hair but essentially
to frame their face.
It has been our experience that men who come in who are in their twenties and thirties
want to have a lot of coverage.
Now someone like yourself, I would actually dissuade from having a hair transplant.
In the past several years we've developed a treatment called Hair Regeneration.
With Hair Regeneration, we have been able to successfully reverse hair thinning without
medication, such as finasteride.
What we're doing is we are using a wound-healing technology, which was originally intended
to help the hair transplants heal better, but what we learned was that it actually caused
thinning hairs to become thicker.
With further refinement and development, and protocols and customization, we've now developed
a system and we do a lot of treatments for non-surgical hair loss treatment for patients
who come to us from all over the world.
We're actually now bringing this treatment to areas outside of our two offices in Manhattan
and Long Island, and we've now branched out and are placing these types of centers in
other places to bring this technology closer to people.
Interestingly, we’ve made a lot of observations, and in many patients, the degree of hair loss,
as long as there are hairs that are present, we can get coverage that actually exceeds
two hair transplants, and that's really remarkable.
We customize for every patient, there are patients who we may do a second injection
to try to get even more benefit.
There are going to be some people who don't respond to the treatment, there are going
to be people who respond better, and other people who don't respond as aggressively - - there's
a spectrum.
With male pattern hair loss, more than 99% of our patients actually do see benefit.
And so I would suggest that, in addition to Hair Regeneration, if you want to try to hold
on to the hair that you have, with or without this technology, you should also think about
finasteride or propecia.
The only reason that a lot of men right now are hesitant about propecia or finasteride
is because there have been studies that show long term sexual side effects in a specific
group of men that were studied, which has resulted in a lot of men choosing not to take
finasteride.
Many of these people come to us to have Hair Regeneration treatment and are very happy
with the results.
So far we have 3-5 years of data that show that the results are sustainable, but there
is a possibility for the need for more injections.
We've looked back at the state-of-the-art for hair loss and if someone needs to have
an injection every 3-5 years to keep and thicken their hair, well that is much more convenient,
much more easy to live with than doing transplant every 3-5 years.
So I would probably dissuade you again from doing a transplant.
Learn about the medical and this newer technology options to stabilize and thicken your existing
hair.
The sooner you get some type of treatment the better it is.
We all say that we can salvage hair thats existing, and existing hair can be below the
skin, but if the hair has stopped growing altogether, as in a scalp that has been a
long time bald, then that hair isn't salvageable.
So I hope I was helpful I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.