Am I a candidate for Hairline Lowering FUE?
How much would it cost?
As you can tell by the photos, I have a receding hairline.
My expectations with surgery would be to have my hairline lowered to give me a more youthful
look.
I am 22 years old.
If it means anything, my hair is straight being that I’m West Indian.
How much would this cost and is it possible?
Thank you for your question.
You’re 22 years old and you’ve submitted photos and asking a question about whether
or not you’re a candidate for FUEs or follicular unit extraction transplant surgery.
You explained that your hair is straight related to your West Indian origin.
So to answer a question like this, first, the point of understanding whether or not
you’re a hair transplant candidate has to begin with the question about your recession
or receding of your hairline.
So you’ve noticed at a very young age that your hairline is receding so the question
here is where will that hairline be three years from now, five years from now or ten
years from now.
One of the question is always raised about surgery is how many grafts can you actually
place or what the more important question is how much hair do you have to graft.
You see when you are young and you have some receding technically it’s not difficult
to address that relatively small amount of recession with transplant but you have to
remember that the donor area, the area where you transplant from is limited.
Think of the baldest man you’ve ever seen and in the medical field we refer to that
as Norwood 7 which is a very thin rim of hair.
That rim of hair is referred to as genetically resistant.
That means that no matter how old they get that hair will always be there.
Hair transplant is the selective use of this genetically resistant area and transplanting
it to other areas.
So which means that there is a limit to how much hair you have available to transplant.
It’s like having only so much money in the bank; you can’t use it all up because you
may need the money later.
So look at your family history, see what other male members of the family whether it’s
father, uncles, cousins or etc.
What is their hair loss pattern like?
Within a family, hair loss is not determine by any specific pattern such as dominant or
recessive or the common myth of maternal uncle, it’s not the case it’s variable.
Even within siblings it can be variable, one brother can have a lot of hair, and another
brother can have thinning hair or hair loss at a relatively young age.
So think about the future before you address the amount of recession you have now.
Now, in thinking about other options besides transplant in the United States there are
two drugs that are approved for hair loss one is minoxidil which is a topic solution
or foam and the other is finasteride which is an oral medication with blocks an enzyme
called 5-alpha reductase. 5-alpha reductase blocks the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone.
A specific subgroup of men with male pattern hair loss have what’s called androgen sensitive
hair follicles.
Those androgen sensitive hair follicles will thin in response to circulating dihydrotestosterone
or DHT.
What that means is that by taking finasteride you reduce DHT thereby restoring the functionality
of hair follicle.
The problem is, there are two problems really.
One is a significant number of men do not respond to finasteride.
Many men have come to us for hair transplant or hair loss solutions because they were taking
finasteride and they lost hair in spite of it.
A more well-known issue right now is that there is a question about the long-term sexual
side effects of taking Finasteride.
This has led in our practice for a lot of men to come in who are in their 20’s or
30’s to seek an alternative.
What we’ve developed in our practice is this alternative that we call Hair Regeneration.
And what it is, is the application of the material called extra cellular matrix combined
in a specific way with platelet rich plasma and what we have done over the past several
years with hundreds and hundreds of patients coming from all over the world we’ve developed
our own method of formulation and customization based on a large clinical pool of data.
So what we do is actually a one-time injection that appears to last up to five years, up
to this point and has been a remarkable benefit for men who don’t want to take Propecia
or finasteride, or men who are taking it and are still losing hair.
It also has proven to be beneficial for female pattern hair loss.
So this means that when you are considering a solution for your receding hair line think
about your future, think about where your hairline is going and what can happen when
you are 25 or 30 years old.
Also think about medical options as opposed to surgery and then consider some of these
newer developing treatments like ours called Hair Regeneration, the use of extra cellular
matrix to help restore the functionality of the hair follicle.
The problem with this is that hair research has not revealed the critical mechanism of
hair growth to the level that we understand everything about it so we’ve been very fortunate
that clinically found a material that was already approved for wound healing that we’ve
been able to now help a lot of patients who have male pattern and female pattern hair
loss.
So this is something else than you can explore as an option.
And with that being said, I hope this was helpful and thank you for your question.