Everybody is different, and that is why it is necessary to have a personal assessment during a private consultation. Something that might work for one individual may not work as well for another. Gender plays a big role in treating hair loss and deciding what will be the most effective hair restoration strategy.
Men have a different balding pattern than women. Therefore, they will need to use a different strategy to replace lost hair and make the limited amount of donor hair that can safely be used stretch as far as possible. In men, the balding pattern will begin in the frontal temporal lobes and creep back over time. At a certain stage, the crown will begin to thin and eventually bald towards the front until the balding eventually meets up in the middle, producing the traditional male hair loss “cul-de-sac”. So in most situations of male pattern baldness, it is of utmost importance to restructure, rebuild, and reinforce the frontal hairline in a natural way that has a lot of density. The frontal hairline is what shapes our face, and as long as we have a strong frontal hairline that extends back to at least the halfway point of the scalp, no matter whatever future hair loss occurs, it will always appear that you have hair.
In women, the hair loss occurs in the middle of the scalp and fans out, typically showing up the most where women normally part their hair. So it is very important in these cases to rebuild and reinforce the area where the hair is parted as well as the surrounding areas. Adding density is not always the most critical thing to consider, as women tend to have longer hair and can camouflage areas that are thinner as long as hair has been placed in the proper areas to at least give the illusion of thickness.
Ethnicity also plays a big role in structuring a proper hair restoration plan. Characteristics of the hair must be taken into consideration. For example, what is the shape of the hair? Is it thin and straight, or is it coarse and wavy? If hair is coarse and curly, it will obviously take up more real estate, so it is not as necessary to go for the maximum density when placing the follicles.
The most important thing to take into consideration is the density of the hair in the donor area. Asians typically have around 75,000 hairs, African-Americans have roughly 60,000, and Caucasians have just over 100,000 hair follicles. So when deciding how many hairs can safely be harvested, it is very important not to go over the safe limit, or else the donor area will look thin. A plan must be created to utilize the available hairs to maximize the effect of what the patient is looking for.
Determining the cause of the hair loss is another key point to take into consideration. Some hair loss is temporary, so a hair transplant would not be the answer to those cases. Making a plan that helps the patient maintain the hair that they still have for as long as possible is even more important than the hair loss itself.
