Surgery is another method of possibly reversing hair loss and
baldness, although it may be considered an extreme measure. Methods
used include hair transplantation, whereby hair-producing follicles are
taken from the back and sides of the head and inserted into bald or
thinning areas.
Follicular Hair Transplant Overview
A follicular unit extraction (FUE)
is one of the latest surgical hair replacement techniques. A FUE hair transplant process typically takes between 2 and 4 hours, and is
usually conducted under a local anesthetic on an out-patient basis. It's
a major advance over the older hair transplantation procedures that used
larger grafts and sometimes produced a pluggy, unnatural look
At
the beginning of FUE surgery, small strips of skin are collected from the
donor site and closed with small sutures.
The tissue is then dissected under
magnification into follicular unit grafts (containing 1-4 hairs) and
multi-follicular unit grafts (containing up to 6 hairs each). These
natural anatomical small graft clustering, allow for equal distribution of hair in the balding area of
the scalp and produce more natural-looking results
Hair is usually taken from the back of
the head. The back and sides of hair on a balding scalp is known as
donor dominant hair as described above. It is hair that will continue to grow throughout
life.....even in men who have extensive male pattern hair loss.
Some surgeons use follicular unit
grafts, while others prefer to use multi-follicular unit grafts in the
central areas of the scalp.
The operation is performed with a
punch-like scalpel that cuts the skin around the follicle. This
removes follicles from the donor area at the same time. Techniques
allow the surgeon to make a shallow punch on the surrounding tissue,
ensuring that the graft be released from the tissue with minimum
traction and with better ease. The extracted follicle grafts are then
inserted into small slits that have been cut in the recipient area.
These slits do not need suturing, heal quickly, and the new hair begins
to grow in about 7 to 10 days
Most hair loss clinics use the standard
mini-micro grafting process, where graft sizes are arbitrarily
determined by the doctor, generally including clumps of up to 12
follicles – saving the time a consultant needs to spend with
individual patients.
Once the receptor site has completely
healed, it is virtually impossible to detect that any sort of hair
transplant procedure has taken place.
You need to research and find the
clinic most suited to your needs. A consideration would be to look for
those using only the latest, follicular graft techniques.
Aftercare Includes the application of a dressing to the treated area, and
patients may be asked to use moist compresses or sprays and to sleep in
a semi-upright position for 2-3 days following the procedure, to
minimize swelling and bruising.
Complications No one should rush to
have a hair transplant. As with any surgical procedure there may be
complications.
History
A Japanese dermatologist, Dr. Okuda, has been credited with first using
a "punch" technique hair transplant in 1939. He describes
transplanting round skin grafts with hair follicles from areas of scalp,
to round openings in scarred areas of the scalps of burn patients. He
found that after a while, the grafts would continue to grow hair. Another Japanese dermatologist, Dr. Tamura, used a similar method in
1943 wherein he would gather grafts containing only 1-3 hairs from an
elliptical incision taken from the donor area, to restore hair in the
female pubic region. Dr. Tamura's method is in many ways similar to
today's methods.
Dr. Norman Orentreich The principles and techniques
of modern hair transplantation were rediscovered by Dr. Norman
Orentreich in New York City in the early 1950's. He published his work
in 1959 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science. His original
paper was rejected 3 times by other medical journals as they did not
believe that the procedure could work. Dr. Orentreich is credited as the
first to use this technique to treat male patterned baldness. Dr. Orentreich
discovered that hair
retained the properties of the area it came from, rather than the area
to where it ended up. Hair that was transplanted from permanent zones in
the back of the scalp into balding areas in the front of the scalp would
continue to grow as if it had remained in the permanent zone. He used
the term "Donor Dominance" to explain this principle of hair
transplantation, that grafts continue to show the characteristics of the
donor site at their new location. Donor dominance is due to the fact
that the pathogenesis of hair loss is inherent to each individual hair
follicle. Donor
dominant hair follicles are under a different form of genetic control
than follicles on the front and top of the head and they are not subject
to inherited effects of “balding genes”.
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