If you transplant gray hairs from the body, will they be the same color on the scalp?
Hairs grafted from one location to another do not change their color. Generally, the amount of pigment remains the same, as well. This means that if your hair is brown, the grafted hairs will produce brown hair. If the grafted hairs are white, they will grow white hairs upon transplantation and regrowth. With age, hairs loose their ability to make pigment. Some hairs loose that ability before other hairs. For instance, hairs on the side of the scalp loose this ability to produce pigment sooner than the hairs on the top of the scalp or the back of the scalp. Some regions of body hair produce white hair sooner than other regions due to the loss of pigment formation capacity.
The cells that produce pigment are called melanocytes. When the ability to produce pigment ceases, the hairs will turn white rather than grey. Therefore, the term grey is really is inaccurate. Actually, true grey hairs are extremely uncommon, but they do occur due to a decrease in the am
ount of pigment rather than an absence of pigment production.
Hair also tend to maintain the same diameter as the pre-transplanted area. On some occasions the diameter will be slightly greater upon transplantation and other times the diameter will be the same.
Will stopping to use Nizoral have as dramatic of an effect as stopping Propecia? I know whatever benefits you get from using the shampoo will be lost upon stopping to use it but would it be as bad as stopping Propecia?
I’ve never seen a remarkable result from Nizoral or Minoxidil. I have not seen improved hair growth with Nizoral alone, but it is supposed to work as well as Minoxidil alone. They both stimulate some hair growth and may slow hair loss in some patients. I have seen rare remarkable results with Propecia, but most of the remarkable results on Propecia seem to occur when patients combine both Minoxidil and Propecia. When patients stop any of these medications, they will loose what ever benefit they received from the medication. If your benefit from any one of these medications was slight, your loss will be slight. Most of the time patients simply note a reduction in the rate of hair loss with these medications. Therefore, you can expect the rate of loss to increase once you discontinue any of them.
This class 3 vertex patient has medium caliber, dark brown hair with well above average donor density. Dr. Cole’s treatment plan for this patient was to transfer 740 CIT/C2G grafts into the vertex. C2G is a CIT (non-strip) preparation method where advanced technology allows our surgical team to harvest over 1500 grafts in an 8-hour day, without exposing any scalp. This method gives our patients the option to leave our clinic without any trace of extraction/harvesting in the donor area. The goal of this patient was to improve the overall appearance and density in the vertex that once existed. Subsequent to the CIT procedure, the patient received a small session of micro/mini grafts. The pre-existing mini grafts may require redistribution to eliminate the grafted appearance.
Transplanting too high of a density into a recipient area that is already relatively dense can cause fatal trauma to the pre-existing (native) follicles. High densities placed into an already progressively thinning crown can create a bigger problem than most patients seem to know prior to the procedure. For example, a surgeon transplants 200 multi-hair grafts on a patient who only has a 50 sq. cm. size area of recession, the patient will have a great risk of having an unnatural appearance.
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I have been recommended 600 to 1000 grafts to the front. I would like to know what is the highest density and graft count with more aggressive density on the front hairline. I would like to have the front hairline to be suitable for a 36yo that is not on meds.
You can go with the maximal density, but I’ve seen many patients from physicians who claim to place 70 to 100 grafts per sq cm that are growing 20 grafts per sq cm. One of two things occurred. One is that the patients received 20 grafts per sq cm, which is not likely. The other is that they received 60 to 70 grafts per sq cm and they lost 50 grafts per sq cm because the placed density was much higher than their scalp could tolerate. There are studies out there showing that densities of 40 per sq cm grow only 73%. I like to keep my maximal density between 40 and 50 per sq cm because I have seen consistent growth rates above 90% in my hands. The other problem with poor growth from an attempt to achieve maximal density is that it may poison the scalp for future surgery and nothing may grow subsequently. It is best to stick with a safe density of 45 per sq cm on the hair line and in the rest of the scalp. This seems to work best for my patients. It’s not as if 70 per sq cm will not grow in some patients. The problem is that you cannot tell which patients it will grow in and which patients it will not grow in. The only way to tell is to try it and if it does not work, the patient is in real trouble.
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