i have MPB and last year had a corneal transplant procedure done last summer. Since then i’ve had to use a steriod eye drop (predforte) in my eye once a day to prevent rejection. I’ve been taking propecia for 3.5 months now and still see hairloss, could the eye drop be accelerating the the hair loss? P.S. i am 21 years old
I would doubt the connection from steroids in your eye to hair loss induced by steroids systemically. The stress from surgery can accelerate MPB. Stay on the Propecia.
I’m a 34 year old male and have been using propecia for about a year. I’m considering hair transplant surgery and was wondering if I would need to continue using propecia after the surgery to prevent any shedding? Thanks for your help.
Absolutely continue taking Propecia through the entire process and on to at least 9 months, if not ‘forever’. If you don’t, you will lose the hair benefits you accumulated since you started taking the drug and run the risk of hair loss shock with the transplant.
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Hi. Dr. Rassman,
I am a 20-year old male and have been experiencing hair loss since around the end of high school (when I was about 18-years old). It wasn’t bad then, just a little noticeable on the sides. However, over the past 2 years, it has gotten progressively worse, and now the crown area is getting really bad. In September, I started doing laser therapy, but it haven’t seen any new hair growth and am still experiencing hair loss. About a month ago, I added minoxidil and proscar to my hair care regimen in hopes of not losing any more hair and if possible, growing some of it back. However, when I shower, I still lose hair when I shampoo (with Nizoral) and when I apply minoxidil, hairs still come off my head and I can see them in my hands. It seems like none of these products are working for me, and I am really deciding whether or not to get a hair transplant procedure done. I am going to attach some pictures to this e-mail so you can see what my hair looks like, and I hope you can tell me, by looking at the pics, if I should be patient and continue with the minoxidil, proscar, and laser, or if I should just forget about that and just do a hair transplant. As I said previously, I am only 20 and losing my hair is constantly on my mind, which sometimes interferes with my studying and my thoughts when I am around other people (I always think they are going to stare). Can you PLEASE let me know if a hair transplant is out of the question for me or not, or if I should wait a bit and see if proscar and minoxidil work? Thank you so much for your time and patience, and I hope that you have time to reply. Thanks again!
If you want to be proactive with your hair loss problem (as I see that you are with your finasteride and minoxidil regimen) you should be evaluated by a doctor and have your scalp hair mapped for miniaturization. Your photographs are a start, but you should really seek a private consultation with a physician. This site is not meant to give personal or private medical advice.
You must wait and give the medications time to work (about a year). Get yourself evaluated now and again in a year. Hair transplants may be out of the question at this time, but if your medication fails to work and you continue with frank balding patterns emerging, then a reassessment is worthwhile.
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You’ve wrote that minoxidil and finasteride may not be effective treatment for DUPA. What might be some of the more common treatments available to men suffering from this condition?
-Thanks
Unfortunately there is no medical treatment for DUPA (diffuse unpatterned alopecia). I have recently seen a patient with substantial reversal of DUPA on finasteride alone, but this is not what we normally see. For this young man, the reversal brought his hair back to almost normal fullness.
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Hello Dr. Rassman. My question is concerning the dosage of finasteride i’ve been taking for the past 7 months. I only split my proscar in half for the first several months (2.5 mg a day), and I believe results have been fairly positive so far (a lot less hair in the shower). What’s concerning me is that I have lowered my dosage back to 1 mg recently. I know that this is the recommended dosage, but could I possibly have hurt the finasteride’s long-term effectiveness by starting at a higher dosage and then lowering it? Thanks.
You did the right thing by bringing the dose to the recommended level. The research on dose suggests that 1mg is as good as 2 or 5mgs. A higher dose of finasteride should not impact future adjustments to the correct dose.
This patient had some of the old hair plugs in his hairline, which we removed with a FUE procedure (2,200 grafts) and then created camouflage to rebuild a new frontal hairline. In just 6 months (see after photos), the early results are very impressive indeed and I would expect that the fullness will double in the next 2-3 months. Click photos to enlarge.
Before:
After (6 months later):
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sir,
I have swelling in neck region lymph node from last three months. Positive for TB after FNAC test. Not yet taken medication. Doctors suspects extra pulmonary TB. Lungs are clear in
xray. I have hair loss. Is it just cuz of TB and will it be continue if i take medication regularly? Is it temporary or permanent hair loss? Or i regain hairs after treatment, cuz i have
no hereditary for hair loss in my family. i have very low density of hairs now. no bald spots but hairs density getting lower.please help respond me soon
Before worrying about hair loss, you need to see a doctor (or continue seeing a doctor) to have your medical problems treated. Tuberculosis can manifest in many ways, which can include hair loss due to weight loss and chronic illness issues. If your hair loss is not genetic, it may be due to the stress on your body from the disease process, but if you add genetic hair loss on the disease problem, it will probably not come back. Generally you hair should return, but there is no guarantees and you do not have genetic hair loss compounding your problem.
From a historical perspective, hair loss was very common in the cities when TB ran wild. That was why a woman looked for a hairy man to qualify a man as a prospective husband. If a man lost his hair, the presumption was that they had TB and would probably die from it, not living long enough to provide family support for the long term.
I used rogaine, it works on my both scalp and crown well. and then i used tricomin with stopping Rogaine and get a special treatment. however i lost my hair after stopping Rogaine in 4 months. If I use rogaine one more, will there be hair-regrown? or not anymore?
You probably will not get all your hair back, but it is worth a try. If minoxidil was working so well for you I am curious to know why you stopped using it…
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Hello and thanks again for this most helpful website.
I am a female who is just over one year post-op. For months now (no exaggeration), there has been a 1″ to 2″ band of stubble on the top\front of my scalp that DOES NOT GROW. It remains stubble.
I went to my HT surgeon for a follow-up and he said it’s just “slow growth” and we should wait another 8-9 months for another follow-up. The rest of my HT seems to have grown in fine, albeit I wish I had more grafts. How is it possible that this stubble has just stopped growing?
With many thanks and blessings.
Transplanted hair should usually start growing in 3-5 months. They should be all growing in six months and by month 12 they should be a few inches long, as thick as the original hair and long enough to comb. Some variation is seen in the growth rate among people, but no growth in one year is unusual and its causes should be explored further by your hair transplant doctor.
I have on rare occasions seen the presence of persistent stubble in the transplanted area (rarely longer than 1cm). What the stubble (after 6 months at least) should reflect is the old left-over hairs from the transplant. You can confirm this by pulling out a few of these and you should see no bulb at the ends of the hairs (from deep in the skin). If that is what you are seeing, pay no attention and these should eventually come out in a hair wash. You might get a second opinion.
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hello,
i recently became worried that my hair may be thinning so i saw a doctor in san francisco who quickly looked at my hairline and told me that i had signs of male pattern baldness and prescribed propecia. i wanted him to determine whether i just had a mature hairline or if it was in fact balding because my hair is very thick and i have a lot of it. i want to make sure that i actually need the propecia before i begin taking it. i had hoped to get a miniaturization exam to be sure but he seemed certain that i was thinning. can you give me some advice on how to get a hair miniaturization exam somewhere in the bay area. also, i am tempted to just begin taking the propecia, if i find out later that i didn’t need it, do i risk any irreversible damage to my hair? thanks
Your questions should be easily answered, but without knowing or seeing what you are talking about, I can’t help very much! Propecia should not hurt you if you have a maturing hairline and do not have genetic male pattern balding developing, but the real issue is why take drugs if you are not balding. Telling the difference between a maturing hairline and frontal balding is a bit of an art which hopefully your doctor will have. An ethical doctor is also critical, because you would not want a surgery if your hairline will stabilize at the mature level. I have an office in San Jose, CA — come pay us a visit.
