Dear Fuewise,
Hopefully I can help you out with this phenomena of BHTs. Body hair has for the most part been utilized as a last donor resort, especially for those patients who are seeking repair work and/or simply lack available donor in the scalp. Prior to the advent of FUE/FIT technology, past hair transplant patients who no longer possessed adequate scalp laxity could no longer accomodate another strip procedure. There was too much apparent risk of the scar healing with an unacceptable width. With FUE/FIT extractions, scalp laxity is not an issue.
In addition, those patients who had past "open donor" or plugs as we commonly know by term, had issues of donor area depletion and can now potentially seek other areas of the body to replenish or restore their donor area in the scalp.
It almost sounds like you you are considering BHT that would not be blended in with any scalp hair? Feel free to correct me if necessary. I would not recommend that anyone would consider using BHT in a high impact visual area like the hairline without the miixing or blending of scalp hair. Why? Body hair may not bear similiar characteristics as one's scalp and could potentially cause eye drift to that location if it were to stand on its own.
Many patients and doctors prefer available chest and/or back hair for two reasons. The first is because most of the available clinical data on BHTs were from chest to scalp. Dr. Ray Woods and Dr. Angela Campbell probably have more emperical data than anyone that I am aware of, and my understanding is that most of their research and experience have been from chest to scalp. Second, chest and back hair tend to more parallel scalp hair characteristics.
In the US BHT is still in its infancy with only a few hair transplant surgeons experimenting with it. I have yet to see any formal publications regarding clinical trials and their results. Again most of the BHT work in the US is related to repair situations with a varying degree of results. Very recently there have been more success stories from patients doing BH into scars.
My opinion? The jury is still out and I recommend anyone who has available scalp donor to consider that first and body hair reserves as a last resort. Best wishes to you!
