Everybody 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 lately to create it a feasible, safe and not as risky option for those battling with male pattern baldness, many celebrities such as for instance Nicholas Cage, Brendan Fraser Mather MOcanhey, Dwayne Johnson ('the Rock',WWE) Salman Khan (Bollywood) and even Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are believed to have had hair transplantation surgery, although such is the stigma attached that do not require 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 were just like the way hair transplantation is completed today. 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 particularly, Dr. Norman Orentreich, began to try out the thought of relocating or transplanting the hair on the trunk and sides of the pinnacle to the balding areas. Dr. Orentreich's experiments showed that whenever bald resistant hairs from the trunk and sides of the pinnacle were relocated, they maintained their bald resistant genetic characteristic aside from where these were transplanted.
This principle, known as "Donor Dominance", established that hair could be transplanted from the bald resistant donor areas to the balding areas and continue to develop for a life time. This laid the building blocks for modern hair transplantation. Throughout the 60's and 70's hair transplants grew in popularity. However, the typical of care involved the use of larger grafts that were removed by round punches and often contained many hairs. In the 80's hair restoration surgery evolved dramatically, as the large punch grafts were gradually replaced with an even more refined mixture 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 removed from the trunk of the pinnacle and then trimmed into mini and micrografts.
Forms of Hair Transplant
You will find two main ways of Follicular unit hair transplant surgery. Follicular unit Transplant commonly known as FUT or 'strip surgery' and Follicular unit extraction, commonly known as FUE The main difference is the method of extracting the transplanted hair. FUT and FUE are actually complimentary forms of HT, not competing ways of which one must produce a choice.
FUT versus FUE
The 90's saw the gradual introduction of a really refined surgical procedure now known as "follicular unit hair transplantation" or "FUT" ;.This exacting and labour intensive procedure transplants hairs inside their naturally occurring one, two, three, and four hair "follicular unit groupings" in which they grow naturally. The idea of creating the whole 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 unearthed that utilizing the microscope to examine the donor tissue he and his staff were able to successfully isolate and trim the naturally occurring follicular units into individual grafts. Dr. Limmer shared his techniques and findings together with his colleagues and together with Drs. Bernstein, Rassman and Seager, was a persuasive advocate for the follicular unit hair. The procedure involving follicular hair transplants is regarded as being the most truly effective among hair restoration methods. In follicular hair transplant, the surgeon transplants hair from the permanent zone in the trunk of the scalp onto the affected areas.
If you will need a large area covered, then you almost certainly wish to select FUT because it's the more economical with regards to number of grafts for price paid. If you absolutely, positively don't want strip surgery while worried about scarring, then FUE can be your only alternative. Unlike popular belief, both methods leave scars. FUT will leave a thin line across the trunk of your face, whereas FUE will leave little unpigmented dots across the trunk of one's head. The only real difference is that the FUE scars are not concentrated together and therefore harder to detect when wearing hair very short. There is without doubt that FUE procedures are harsher on the grafts than FUT procedures. Because of this the ultimate growth yields are generally lower for FUE in comparison to FUT. But BOTH procedures benefit probably the most part.
Hair Transplant Cost
FUT surgeries are performed by reputable surgeons around the globe however FUE is certainly caused by available through several specialists, a large proportion of reputable ones that I know of come in the United States and Canada. Pricing for FUE from these reputable surgeons is currently near $7- $11 US dollars per graft for FUE, and depending on which level on the Norwood Scale, a level used to assess the progression of male pattern baldness, could be very costly
Go here. 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?
Many of my clients do sometimes check out cut costs by utilizing other surgeons especially in countries such as for instance India, Pakistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe. Although I'm sure there have been success stories via this route please remember in these countries there's little guarantee or action available to you if something does go wrong. I have experienced hair transplant using the FUT method, although not a horror story with regards to scarring or suffering, it didn't yield the expected link between an even more established surgeon placing the same number of grafts (2,000). He's therefore left with poor hair coverage however now has lost the choice to 'shave everything off' due to huge smiley faced scar in the trunk of his head!
