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Hair
Transplant Misconceptions - Part 2
Common fallacies disseminated by hair transplant surgeons still
using older techniques.
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Fallacy #5
With a young balding man, the doctor rubs the hair in the back and sides
of his head and announces: "You have plenty of hair for a transplant."
Explanation:
Each one of us is born with a different, but finite, quantity of hair.
New hair cannot be created. Scientific measurements (of hair density),
such as densitometry, provide the surgeon with much greater accuracy
than subjective assessments when estimating the total supply of permanent
hair. The importance of accurately estimating the total donor reserves
for proper long-term planning cannot be over emphasized. Beware of any
doctor who says that you are a great candidate for a transplant before
he spends the time to carefully examine you.
Fallacy #6
By cutting out some of the bald area in the back, scalp reductions save
hair for future loss in the front.
Explanation:
Such statements reflect an unacceptable lack of knowledge. Hair is a
limited resource that is depleted regardless of how it is moved. A scalp
reduction is not a magical process (as it is often portrayed). It moves
hair to the front of the scalp at the expense of the back. With a scalp
reduction, the hair in the donor area is thinned considerably, and the
scalp's laxity (looseness) is decreased as the scalp is stretched to
cover new area. This means that when the frontal hair is lost, the surgeon
may not be able to harvest the quantity of hair needed to meet the patient's
needs, as the hair supply might run out before the completion of surgery.
As most people want to frame their faces, the frontal restoration usually
takes precedence over the crown for hair redistribution purposes. If
the crown is treated first, the surgeon must be certain from the very
start that the way the hair is distributed leaves enough hair in reserve
to cover the remainder of the balding scalp. Scalp reductions, by addressing
the crown first, significantly compromise this principle. In addition,
scalp reductions can cause problems such as scarring, a thinned scalp,
altered hair direction, and a host of other unwanted effects, that become
more and more difficult to deal with as the patient's baldness progresses.
Fallacy #7
Removing large amounts of donor hair is unsafe.
Explanation:
The judgment of an experienced surgeon will insure that the amount of
hair that is harvested from the donor area is safe and appropriate.
If follicular dissection is performed carefully using microscopes, the
amount of hair needed for the average large session is well within the
safe limits of transplantation. The amount of moveable donor hair reflects
the size of the donor area, the scalp's looseness, the number of hairs
per square inch, and the amount of scarring (if any) from previous surgeries.
These factors must be considered before the surgical procedure, ideally
during the patient's initial evaluation.
Fallacy #8
With new laser technology, recipient sites can be made without injury
to the transplanted area.
Explanation:
Lasers were introduced to hair transplantation to produce slits that
were supposed to look better than punch holes, and to remove tissue
to accommodate large grafts. The exclusive use of follicular units eliminates
the need for lasers since the small grafts fit into very tiny micro-slits
that can be created without removing tissue. Regardless of how precise
the laser beam, or how small the zone of thermal burn around the wound
that the laser produces, the laser still makes a hole or slit by destroying
and removing tissue. This is essentially the same type of wound produced
by the cold steel punches of the early days of hair transplantation.
Lasers will always produce more injury to the recipient area than a
micro-slit that does not remove tissue.
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Recommended
Resources |
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- Ask questions and get information on Hair Transplants
in our Men's
Forums and Women's
Forums!
- Information provided courtesy of the New
Hair Institute, taken from "The Patient's Guide to
Hair Transplantation" William R. Rassman, MD and Robert
M. Bernstein, MD
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