Thank you for your question.
You’ve submitted some photos and you – you're asking about hair transplant.
And you – getting into the question, commonly asked about numbers of graphs and you're not
interested in taking finasteride and I suspect – we understand why.
And addition, you're also asking is, ‘Hair transplant the only option?’
Well, I can certainly assist you with this question.
I’m a board certified Cosmetic Surgeon practicing in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years.
Hair transplant and hair loss is a big part of my practice.
In fact, I’m the founder of TrichoStem Hair Regeneration Center, a non-surgical alternative
to hair transplant for men and women with thinning hair.
I’ve been very active in developing methods, specifically something called hair regeneration
to help people with one of the biggest issues, that’s a frustration, with hair transplant.
So I can certainly give you some guidance as to how I look at a patient when you come
in and you ask about hair transplant.
To begin with, it is very important to understand that in the absence of you not taking a drug
like finasteride which is a DHT blocker or Dihydrotestosterone blocker; the reason why
a lot of people come to us don’t want to take finasteride is because of recent concerns
of about long term sexual side effects.
The actual proof and the long term evidence remains to be fully defined.
But certainly there’s some literature supporting this concern.
So with that being said, it’s very important to understand that hair transplant treats
hair loss by borrowing from a limited area in the back of the scalp that we refer to
it as the donor area.
Now regardless of the current noise that is all about the technologies; whether it is
FUE’s or with robot surgeries, or any other technologies, we have to accept a certain
physiologic reality and that is the donor area is limited.
Now to understand the math behind this.
When your hair – when you have a lot of hair – you had about a 100,000 hairs on
the scalp.
When you first noticed hair loss, you’ve already lost 50 percent.
From a given donor area, you may hear numbers from transplant surgeons that range anywhere
from 1,500 graphs to 5,000 graphs.
And regardless of the numbers and how many can be moved and placed, you're still looking
at a fraction of what once – what there once was.
In our practice, what we tell patients is even if you are interested in getting a hair
transplant, you need something to stabilize your hair.
You need something to try to prevent what is inevitable which is the progression of
hair loss such that when you see someone who’s had a hair transplant, you wonder why they
have all of those ‘pluggy’ little hairs.
It’s because they once had hair next to those transplanted hairs.
Now the younger you are when you get a hair transplant, it’s almost guaranteed that
you will not have enough hair remaining to keep the density by the time, a decade or
two decades, goes by.
And so it really is a problem.
We’ve had patients who are in their mid to late 30’s who have had four hair transplants
and when you see them, they don’t look like they have a lot of hair.
So with this limitation, we first started working with the material called extracellular
matrix to help improve the appearance of the donor area as well as the longevity of the
– or viability of the graphs.
Well, long story short, we figured out that essentially thicker hair has – thinner hair
has became thicker.
And so this resulted in development of something called hair regeneration.
What we do with hair regeneration is we do an injection using a combination of your – a
product of your own blood called platelet-rich plasma mixed in a specific way for your situation
with a material called extracellular matrix which is a wound healing material.
We inject this into the areas of the scalp which is typically for any male-pattern hair
loss, front to back, all the way to the donor area.
The results of this has been consistently significant.
We’ve had more than 99 percent of our male patients responding and we have developed
methods and protocols to even optimize it further beyond that one treatment.
And this is a customized treatment that we’ve worked very hard over many years and have
applied the most data to support this particular strategy.
The results of our treatment has actually proved and time and time again to actually
exceed in the right candidate the results of two hair transplants.
So my suggestion for someone like yourself who doesn’t want to take finasteride and
we’ve had years of experience since the concern about finasteride has been going on
for several years; that on its own, hair regeneration can be very effective.
So understanding this, I think it’s a good idea to actually learn more about other options;
also factor in your age and get realistic understanding of what you can expect with
a transplant.
If you are going to have a transplant, you have to assume you’ll need a second transplant
and you're done the second transplant in ten years but probably sooner.
Again the younger you are, the younger the onset and the progression being relatively
constant, it could be – when we see people who are younger, very often their progression
tends to be very aggressive.
And which means that to you eventually run out of donor to do enough hair transplants.
So I have been – we’ve been very active in educating people about earlier to – earlier
interventions so that you can actually optimize the results of your treatment and then consider
hair transplant if at all.
Most of our patients once they’ve had hair regeneration don’t opt for hair transplant.
So it really has made a huge difference.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck.
And thank you for your question.