For the treatment of balding and hair thinning, hair transplants have been used in the US for over 50 years. Originally developed in Japan during the 1930’s as a way to increase eyebrow and facial hair, the most common use of the hair transplant procedures now is to treat hair loss caused by Male Pattern Baldness. This medical condition, using the correct terminology it is named Androgenic Alopecia, is a genetic problem that can be passed to the patient by either his mother’s line or his father’s. It used to be assumed that only the mother carried the gene for this problem but, by using modern genetic coding techniques, that has now been proven false. The old wives tale that said if your mother’s brothers were bald you would be bald should have said either your mother’s or your father’s brothers.
The standard hair transplant procedure involves removing a portion of scalp from the back of the head, there is usually no hair loss here for men, and then removing the hair follicles from this scrap for individual insertion into the bald spot. This was a step up from the original method of treating hair loss which actually involved transplanting the entire scalp portion into the bald spot. As you can imagine this gave a result that looked like the patient had stuck his finger in a light socket.
The newest procedure, called follicular unit extraction, actually gives the best result because it does not required the removal of any scalp. Instead, the hair restoration surgeon uses a specially designed medical instrument to remove the individual hair follicles and their support structures without any incision and then insert them into the bald spot where desired. This has allowed hair implants women because the old method required an area of thick growth for donation and women generally experience thinning over the entire scalp.
