Expert Advice

Q:
How does male pattern baldness affect transplanted hair?
Question asked on January 12, 2012

What our experts say:
Epstein NB28
Plastic Surgeon
Northbrook, Illinois
It's a procedure that has certainly come a long way over the last 20 years. I still think that there are plenty of men and women who are afraid and fear the procedure because they think it's painful, or more of a concern is that they're going to get an appearance that looks obvious that they've had hair transplants. That was because in the old days you literally would take a clump of hair and transplant that hair and it looked like a doll's head on the grafted areas. Nowadays we literally take a slice of the scalp where there is still active hair growth and where the patient can easily donate the hair. That area is closed up surgically and there is minimal scarring which is covered up by surrounding hair. That strip of hair is then literally divided under a microscope, and it takes hours, into individual hair follicles. Those individual follicles are carefully placed under microscopic visualization in small tiny incision sites that are positioned on the scalp where there is a loss of hair. It's important that when the surgeon is making the recipient site, that he pays attention to direction of the hair follicle because we know that the front of your hairline points downward and you've got to follow the natural swirls of the hair patterns on the scalp. That can make it look abnormal too. We know that this works and that hair that is transplanted and survives is actually there forever. The reason for that is because we know that that hair that came from a remaining hair bearing area has different types of hormonal receptors on it than the hair that was lost. So that's why it works.
Answered on January 12, 2012
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