Category: Other Surgical Procedures

Is it not possible to transplant hair from other body parts to the head. I do realize the texture etc is different, but it might be usefull as filler to make the transplant of people with finer hair like myself have a fuller look. I have had 2 procedures with you with over 3000 grafts but i still really am not 100% happy with the density. And i do not think i have enough hair in my donor area to do another procedure. So i thought it would be great if other hair could be used in order to give my already transplanted area a fuller look. What do you think?

Body hair is being transplanted by a few doctors, but there has not been any real follow-up on the results. The few that I have seen did not meet my standards on density or quality so I have not jumped on board to do body hair transplants. FUE is possible from your remaining donor area, however I would need to assess your supply to judge what kind of density and coverage you could expect. Generally most people have well over 3000 grafts in the donor area, so I would suggest that you make a re-check appointment at my office. While I do keep an open mind on new and creative solutions, I would need to be convinced that body hair transplants will give good results before recommending them over standard solutions.

Can you transplant an eyebrow?

Yes, eyebrow transplants work nicely. There are a series of problems that hair taken from the back of the head causes when it is moved to the eyebrow:

1. It will grow long, so it must be cut on an angle a few times a week.
2. It may take on the thickness of the hair behind the head. If the eyebrow has finer hair, than this might be a problem.
3. There is always a risk of a change in character of the hair itself (unusual).

I love doing eyebrows on men, as most men want bushy or wider eyebrows. For women, we must be selective and sensitive to hair type. The photos below are of one of our male eyebrow patients who just came back a little over a year after his transplant. On the left is the “before” photo, on the right is the “after” photo.

In reply to my post titled Hirsute Men and Head Hair Loss, Duke writes…

That is fascinating but it prompts a few thoughts. Why not use body hair for transplant processes?

More research into the Red Indian genetic heritage us surely required.

And why does the balding gene only impact on the top of the head and not the sides.

This is a fun question. First, why the top of the head. Leonard Shlain’s book, “Sex, Time and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution,” had an interesting insight into the cause of balding. He postulates that our tribal heritage arose when man lived amongst his peers constituting 100-150 people. When looking at that the hunters (the healthy and fit men) in the light of certain qualities, there was a distribution of 4 traits that would pencil out to an 8% rule. He believed as animals learned to be afraid of man, the 8% of the hunters who were bald did not frighten the animals because they did not have the typical framed face of a hairy man, so animals would not run from them. They fulfilled the role of the spotter in the hunting party. Likewise, 8% of men were color blind and could see the animals in the bush missed by normal color visioned men, 8% were left handed and they threw the spear from the left side of the hunting group and 8% were gay so that they would stay home with the women and become more involved in their activities yet retain the strength to protect them. Fathering of children, while the heterosexual man were away hunting, was therefore not a concern.

If you take the 100-150 tribe hypothesis into the Red Indian, it would be relatively easy to see that with a small band of Indians that moved over from the Alaskan Bridge and down the Canadian countryside (they initially migrated to what would become the western American territory) it is possible that selective extermination of a sub-set (based upon the balding trait for example) of Indians over some generations during hard times, might have wiped out that genetic characteristic. This hypothesis for the Red Indian has been made by some, but without the presence of a written language or other documentation of their history, such assumptions might be a dangerous precedence to be proposed by a hair transplant surgeon.

Now, regarding body hair transplantation:

Experimentation is presently occurring on the use of body hair in some transplant centers (they just do not call it experimentation). As body hair grows in singular numbers (not follicular units of more than 1 hair each as in scalp hair) and length is not as long, and the hair cycle is possibly much shorter and the sleep cycle much longer, the use of body hair for transplantation might leave much to be desired.