|
 Dr. Alan J. Bauman is the Founder, Medical Director and Chief Surgeon of the Bauman Medical Group, P.A. located in Wharfside at Boca Pointe in Boca Raton, Florida. His practice is dedicated exclusively to treating male and female pattern hair loss. Dr. Bauman uses state-of-the-art medical and surgical techniques to help his patients maintain and/or restore their scalp hair.
Martin
2004-04-06
When to get a transplant
Dear Dr. Bauman,Thank you for the opportunity to ask you a question.I am 28 years old and a Norwood 3V. My front hair line has been holding steady for the last 4 years or so (I have been losing hair for about 10 years) but it is still ever so slowly receding. My vertex area is in bad shape. It has finally gotten to the stage where when I look at it in the mirror it is very noticeable. I hate this. I also am finding that I am thinning at the BASE of my neck! Not in the donor area, but just underneath it. I also noticed that in really bald men (Norwood 5 or more) most of them have receded at the bases of their necks as well. I haven't seen this talked about much on any of the hair loss sites.Anyway, one of my friends had a hair transplant operation 6 months ago. He was a Norwood 6, and they transplanted about 3200 follicular units in the front and on the top of his head. They left the crown area alone. Recently I saw him and the transplant looked AMAZING!!!!So I finally get to my question, at my age, would you recommend getting a hair transplant to give bring my hair line down by about 2 centimetres, and round out my temples? Or should I wait to go completely bald, like my friend, then get a mega hair transplant. His looks really good, and I am afraid that if I get a transplant now, that may screw up my look in the future. That is, I am afraid that getting multiple small transplants will look WORSE when I am 40 years old, than waiting for myself to go bald and have ONE BIG transplant. Should I fill out my crown area? I am basically a bit worse off than the guy who runs this website in the crown area: http://www.morphollica.com/pics_regimens/editor/top_crown_pics.php. My hair line looks pretty similar to his as well, but I have a bit more diffuse thinning than him.Thank you,Martin
Martin,
Thank you for your question. Many patients wonder about waiting to take action in treating their hair loss. Unfortunately, the longer you wait, the more hair you lose. The most important thing is to start treating your hair loss early by using medical therapy designed to halt or slow the hair loss process. I am a big advocate for Propecia (the daily prescription pill) because I know how effective it can be and because we know that you will never have more hair than you do right now. I always council my hair transplant patients to begin to treat their hair loss as soon as possible. If you wait for the hair loss to progress, it will take many more grafts to accomplish your desired result. If you have an 'aggressive' hair loss process, I would suggest restoring the frontal half of the scalp first before doing work in the crown. The hair restoration process is all about 'supply and demand' and the most important place for you to restore your hair is the frontal area. If you 'run out' of donor hair trying to fill in the crown, you may wish later on that you had restored the frontal area. At a 3-vertex, you may need 3000 to 6000 follicular-unit grafts to fully restore the hair that you have lost--and that usually takes two sessions (sometimes three, rarely one), depending on your hair (color, curl, etc) and your restoration goals. Keep in mind that any area that is completely bare (no matter how large) sometimes needs two sessions to achieve complete coverage. If you go completely bald (class 6 or 7), you could theoretically need up to four sessions of grafting to restore coverage, and you will never achieve the results you could have had if you had used a multi-therapy approach (like Propecia plus transplantation) earlier on. Also, the benefit of restoring hair before it's too far gone is the fact that you never have to go through a time without hair! Today's micrografting can place hair into the thinning areas BEFORE they are noticeably bald. Let me know if you have additional concerns.
Sincerely,
Dr. Bauman Alan J. Bauman, M.D.
doctorb@baumanmedical.com
Bauman Medical Group, P.A. -- Boca Raton, FL
State-of-the-Art Hair Restoration for Men & Women Toll Free (877) BAUMAN-9 "Hair loss is no longer inevitable, it's optional!"
Find out more at www.baumanmedical.com
Click here to return to Dr. Alan J. Bauman, MD's Q&A page.
|
