Doctors on Hair Loss & Hair Transplant surgery.

I am now 19 months post surgery from a body hair transplant with you. I noted significant improvement at the 9 month mark, but minimal since then. Can I expect more growth and more density from the body hair transplant I had with you 19 months ago. I live in Spain.

It’s always difficult to say if hair always grows. It really does not matter if it is head hair to body hair. It’s a bit easier when you place head hair on a bald scalp, however. The same is true for body hair. With body hair we’ve learned a few things. One is that lower densities can produce better yields than higher densities. What does this mean? Well, sometimes a yield of 60% to 70% is the best you will see with body hair and it could be 30 to 40%. With head hair on the other hand, the yield is always 90% or less. Usually the lowest you will see is around 70%. Again high densities seem to play a role in lower density with head hair. I’ve seen body hair results that surely look like 90% yields however. We also know that anagen hairs produce a higher yield than telogen hairs. I’m not certain why.

You have to understand the dynamics. Head hair is 80 to 90% in anagen. Body hair is 40 to 60% in anagen. Therefore, in reality, the best you should see from a head hair transplant is 80 to 90% and the best you should ever see is 40 to 60% from body hair. That does not mean that 10% of head hair and 40 to 60% of body hair died. It means that those percentages should always be resting or in telogen. As one hair cycles out, another cycles in and begins to grow. That’s the dynamics.

I think that most body hair transplant results to date seem to follow scalp hair in terms of growth, though we did recently get a 4 year photo of a patient that certainly seemed much better than his 14 month photo. What this means is that at about 8 to 12 months, the result probably peaked with minimal improvement thereafter.

Your comments about hair length are very important. One thing I’ve found with body hair is that while it does grow longer than on the body, it does not seem to grow more than twice the length it grew on the body. It also grows slower than scalp hair, but faster than body hair. Body hair grows about 0.2 mm per day while scalp hair grows about .44 mm per day. The same body hair transferred to the scalp grows about .34 mm per day. This is important in that it shows body hair does indeed begin to take on more of a scalp hair character when moved to the scalp. Since it will not grow as long as scalp hair, a shorter hair style should ultimately be preferred. This is what we have found. Individuals with significant loss such as yourself note better coverage with longer hair because they need the longer hair to cover all the bald surface area. Ultimately, however, you have a comb over appearance. With the addition of body hair density, you are able to groom your hair shorter, yet still have a better overall appearance without the comb over affect. The shorter hair style will generally make you appear younger as you mature and certainly looks more professional than the longer comb over hair style.

Tags: anagen, bht, body hair transplant, density, hair style, hair transplant, hair transplant procedure, hair transplant results

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