Avoiding Pitfalls in Planning a Hair Transplant

Although many technical advances have already been made in the field of surgical hair restoration over the past decade, particularly with the widespread adoption of follicular transplantation, many problems remain. The majority revolve around doctors recommending surgery for patients that are not good candidates. The most typical reasons that patients should not proceed with surgery are that they are too young and that their hair thinning pattern is too unpredictable. Young persons also have expectations that are typically too much – often demanding the density and hairline of a teenager. Many people that are in the early stages of hair loss should simply be treated with medications, instead of being rushed to go beneath the knife. clinique capillaire And some patients are just not mature enough to make level-headed decisions when their problem is indeed emotional.

In general, the younger the patient, the more cautious the practitioner should be to operate, particularly if the patient has a genealogy of Norwood Class VII hair loss, or diffuse un-patterned alopecia.

Problems also occur when the doctor does not adequately evaluate the patient’s donor hair supply and doesn’t have enough hair to accomplish the patient’s goals. Careful measurement of a patient’s density and other scalp characteristics will allow the surgeon to know exactly how much hair is available for transplantation and enable him/her to create a pattern for the restoration which can be achieved within those constraints.

In all of the situations, spending a little extra time listening to the patient’s concerns, examining the individual more carefully and then recommending cure plan that is consistent with what actually could be accomplished, will go a long way towards having satisfied patients. Unfortunately, scientific advances will improve only the technical areas of the hair restoration process and can do little to insure that the procedure will be performed with the right planning or on the appropriate patient.

Five-year View

The improvement in surgical techniques which have enabled an ever increasing amount of grafts to be placed into ever smaller recipient sites had nearly reached its limit and the limitations of the donor supply remain the major constraint for patients getting back a full head of hair. Despite the great initial enthusiasm of follicular unit extraction, a technique where hair can be harvested directly from the donor scalp (and even the body) without a linear scar, this process has added relatively little towards increasing the patient’s total hair supply designed for a transplant. The major breakthrough should come once the donor supply can be expanded though cloning. Although some recent progress had been made in this area (particularly in animal models) the opportunity to clone human hair reaches least 5 to 10 years away.