I'm a 21-year-old male diagnosed with MPB at age 19.
Recession in hairline has occurred rapidly over past few years.
FUE?
I have tried almost every treatment there is including the big three (fin,minox,nizoral)
and have had terrible side effects with all of them.
There is no hair loss in my immediate family.
I am curious as to know if I can get an FUE treatment at this age, taking into consideration
that I will not be using any three of the treatments I stated above post op.
Without proper stabilization after the procedure, what are my options as far as maintaining
what I have now?
Looking for procedure ASAP
Thank you for your question!
You’re 21 years old, you describe that you have male pattern hair loss since the age
of 19.
You’ve noticed an increased rate of the receding of the hairline.
In your history, you mentioned that you used the big 3 of finasteride, minoxidil and nizoral
and had side effects from all the drugs.
And you ask about FUEs but what I really find really insightful that you are doing is by
asking the question about what can you do about stabilization.
So I’ll share with you exactly how we approach patients like yourself in our practice and
I think you’ll find something very interesting in how we approach patients like yourself.
As a background, I’m a cosmetic surgeon practicing in Manhattan and Long Island for
over 20 years.
Hair transplant has been a very significant part of my practice and what I can tell you
is that we’ve developed a solution for people like yourself for stabilization.
One of the biggest challenges for any transplant surgeon is the rate of hair thinning.
Hair transplant which is very aggressively marketed is unfortunately, the people marketing
it do not counsel very often the need for some kind of stabilization because within
a few years, hair loss will continue and progress and the hair grafts will become isolated.
Many men will not do hair transplants because they are afraid of looking pluggy.
The pluggy appearance is because people lost hair so that hair transplants are left on
their own.
The procedure that we’ve developed is something called Hair Regeneration.
Hair Regeneration is something we developed where we’re combining a wound healing material
called extracellular matrix combined it with platelet-rich plasma.
Platelet-rich plasma is derived from your own blood and is a concentration of wound-healing
factors.
What we do is we developed an algorithm or a process based on different factors such
as gender, age of onset, type of hair and other factors in our algorithm and we actually
do this as an injection.
It’s not surgery but an injection.
What we have observed is that thinning hairs become thicker.
We’re able to halt the progression of the hair loss and in terms of the longevity of
the procedure, we have approximately 5 years of data showing that the procedure does last
and that people aren’t regressing.
Now of course, we treat everybody like an individual so of course, we study individual
patterns.
There’s some people who’ll do more than just one injection based on a very close follow-up
process that we do.
We follow our patients every 3 months.
And we do microscopic photos and digital photography to objectively assess how patients are doing.
So I think that your concern about the stabilization is well founded.
You’re going to avoid a lot of heartache from having a transplant at a younger age
and losing your hair and running out of donor area.
This is something didn’t mention either and I should.
The limitation of hair transplantation is that the permanent zone where the hair is
never going to fall out is actually limited.
And usually, the amount of area that needs to be covered doesn’t match the amount of
hair available for that coverage.
So it’s like having a limited bank account.
So learn more about this new technology called Hair Regeneration and about this approach.
Now as far as the longevity, again, I’ll mention is that in our practice, what we’ve
been doing is explaining to people that if for argument sake that there is a regression,
if someone needs to have hair injection every 3 to 5 years to keep their hair and to keep
their hair thick, that’s much more convenient and sustainable than doing a surgery every
few years until you’re tapped out which unfortunately, many people come to my practice
who’ve had multiple surgeries are in a very difficult position because of that.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!