Everyone has heard about or even seen hair transplant horror stories, maybe in a publication, online or even worse seen the most obvious ‘plugs’ in a elderly friend or relative. However hair transplant surgery has jumped leaps and bound in recent years to make it a practical, safe and not too risky selection for those struggling with male pattern baldness, many celebrities such as for example Nicholas Cage, Brendan Fraser Mather MOcanhey, Dwayne Johnson (‘the Rock’,WWE) Salman Khan (Bollywood) and even Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are believed to own had hair transplantation surgery, although such could be the stigma attached that none of them have admitted to it publicly, it only becomes obvious when studying before and after pictures.
History of Hair Transplant
The origins of hair transplant surgery stem from Japanese dermatologist, Dr. Okuda, who in 1939 published a revolutionary method in a Japanese medical journal of using small grafts that have been just like the way hair transplantation is completed today. کاشت مو This technique involved using hair transplant grafts to correct lost hair from various body areas, including the scalp, eyebrow, and moustache areas.
In the late 50’s one physician specifically, Dr. Norman Orentreich, begun to test out the idea of relocating or transplanting the hair on the back and sides of the top to the balding areas. Dr. Orentreich’s experiments showed that whenever bald resistant hairs from the back and sides of the top were relocated, they maintained their bald resistant genetic characteristic aside from where they certainly were transplanted.
This principle, referred to as “Donor Dominance”, established that hair could possibly be transplanted from the bald resistant donor areas to the balding areas and continue to develop for a life time. This laid the inspiration for modern hair transplantation. Through the 60’s and 70’s hair transplants grew in popularity. However, the typical of care involved the use of larger grafts that have been removed by round punches and often contained many hairs.
In the 80’s hair restoration surgery evolved dramatically, whilst the large punch grafts were gradually replaced with an even more refined mix of mini and micrografts. This “combination mini micrografting” hair transplantation procedure no more used the punch to extract the bald resistant grafts. Rather a reel of bald resistant hair was surgically taken off the back of the top and then trimmed into mini and micrografts.
Types of Hair Transplant
There are two main types of Follicular unit hair transplant surgery. Follicular unit Transplant commonly referred to as FUT or ‘strip surgery’ and Follicular unit extraction, commonly referred to as FUE The key difference is the method of extracting the transplanted hair. FUT and FUE are very complimentary forms of HT, not competing types of what type must create a choice.
FUT versus FUE
The 90’s saw the gradual introduction of a very refined surgical procedure now referred to as “follicular unit hair transplantation” or “FUT” ;.This exacting and labour intensive procedure transplants hairs within their naturally occurring one, two, three, and four hair “follicular unit groupings” in that they grow naturally.
The idea of creating the entire hair restoration using exclusively follicular units was proposed by Dr. Robert Bernstein and was described in the 1995 Bernstein and Rassman publication “Follicular Transplantation” ;.Critical to the success of the follicular unit hair transplant procedure was the introduction of the binocular microscope by Dr. Bobby Limmer of San Antonio Texas in the late 1980’s.
Dr. Limmer discovered that using the microscope to examine the donor tissue he and his staff could actually successfully isolate and trim the naturally occurring follicular units into individual grafts. Dr. Limmer shared his techniques and findings together with his colleagues and along with Drs. Bernstein, Rassman and Seager, was a persuasive advocate for the follicular unit hair.
The method involving follicular hair transplants is regarded as the very best among hair restoration methods. In follicular hair transplant, the surgeon transplants hair from the permanent zone in the back of the scalp onto the affected areas.
If you need a large area covered, you then most likely want to choose FUT because it’s the more economical when it comes to number of grafts for price paid. If you absolutely, positively don’t want strip surgery while concerned about scarring, then FUE is the only alternative. Despite popular belief, both methods leave scars. FUT will leave a slender line across the back of your mind, whereas FUE will leave little unpigmented dots across the back of your head. The only real difference is that the FUE scars aren’t concentrated together and therefore harder to detect when wearing hair very short.
Hair Transplant Cost
FUT surgeries are performed by reputable surgeons all over the world however FUE is certainly caused by available through numerous specialists, a large proportion of reputable ones that I understand of are in the United States and Canada. Pricing for FUE from these reputable surgeons happens to be near $7- $11 US dollars per graft for FUE, and depending about what level on the Norwood Scale, a scale used to gauge the progression of male pattern baldness, could be very costly. Pricing for FUT from these same surgeons is generally in the range of $4-6 per graft, however in Asia and Eastern Europe prices may be even lower.
Does cheaper means better?
Lots of my clients do sometimes check out cut costs by using other surgeons especially in countries such as for example India, Pakistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe. Although I’m sure there were success stories via this route please remember in these countries there is little guarantee or action available to you if something does go wrong. I have observed hair transplant utilising the FUT method, although not a horror story when it comes to scarring or suffering, it did not yield the expected results of an even more established surgeon placing exactly the same number of grafts (2,000). He is therefore left with poor hair coverage however now has lost the possibility to ‘shave it all off’ due to huge smiley faced scar in the back of his head!
Check, Check and Check
I recommend considering hair transplant surgery only once you have tried the non-surgical treatments on the market. Proper you certain you wish to get a hair transplant I’d advice thoroughly researching reputable doctors, obviously price is obviously issue, but in case of hair transplants it should not be the main factor. Indeed the amount of money saved is nothing in comparison to trauma of experiencing to live with a badly scarred scalp for the rest of your life. If you determine to choose more budget surgeon, please do insist on seeing photos of the surgeons previous work and do not hesitate to request contact details of their previous patients.