Category: Uncategorized

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Hair Loss and Vitamin D

My doctor told me that my hair loss was caused by Vitamin D deficiency a year ago. Since then I have been taking Vitamin D but the thinning hair I have did not get better.

A vitamin D deficiency can definitely cause hair loss. Treating it can stop the progression but it may not reverse it. You might have genetic hair loss as well and if you are a female you might have many other causes of hair loss which are discussed in this post from a previous baldingblog question posed back in 2009 which I outlined the approach a woman should do when they have hair loss: https://baldingblog.com/2009/03/13/woman-with-handfuls-of-hair-that-come-out-every-morning/


2017-02-10 07:34:45Hair Loss and Vitamin D

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Hair Plug Removal?

Dear Dr. Rassman:

I am a 44 year old male with obvious hair plugs. I had three sessions from strip grafts back in 1995. In considering all of my repair options, I would like to just be naturally bald. Two surgeons have dissuaded me from having plug removals claiming that scarring would be a limiting factor. I was wondering how you would feel about a staged FUE removal of individual hairs over time allowing healing between sessions. I noticed that you replied to another inquirer that individual graft removal take a week to heal. Therefore, why not just space out the sessions to allow for adequate healing in the meanwhile? I’m not averse to small scarring as anything would be better than my current state. I am not interested in additional grafting as I’m convinced I am continuing to bald and will eventually have an island on the top of my head.

Any thoughts? Thank you.

I can not really address your specific issues, particularly when it comes to scarring, without at least seeing what you’re dealing with. You can use follicular unit extraction (FUE) to extract the big hair plugs, but sometime excision of the plugs work well. It all depends upon the extent of your problem. How many plugs do you have and where are they located (photos should tell me the answer)?

Sometimes if the frontal hairline is very pluggy and there is a concentration, removing the frontal hairline does not leave much scarring in many people. Is it your intention to be go completely slick bald (very difficult) or just a repair (much easier to do)? Send me good digital photos (reference this post when sending) and then we can set up a telephone consultation.

For those interested in seeing the difference a repair can do for a pluggy look, take a look at this patient.

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Two days training and some clinics in China unleash people to do FUE on people like you

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004217/report-exposes-chinas-unlicensed-hair-transplant-industry

This is similar to many clinics in Turkey where almost 500 clinics have FUE surgery performed by minimally trained personal. I believe that these people can learn how to do it as they practice more and more on patients, but the problem is what happens when there is a side effect from anesthesia, or a cardiac arrhythmia? Then the patient has a risk of death, something that has been reported in countries from around the world. These ‘on-the-job’ trained people certainly can’t respond properly to any emergency. In the 16,000 surgeries we have done in our practice, we have seen such events almost every year, but we NEVER had a problem addressing the problem when it appeared because we are skilled in Emergency treatments and we are physicians who know this as a result of years of speciality training.

Hair transplant market in China reached US$1.4 billion in 2017 (In comparison, US hair transplant market accounts for US$1.74 billion in 2017, per Global Market Insight Inc. https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/hair-transplant-market)
Undercover reporter took a 3 day course with 3 other trainee (a breast specialty doctor from Xinjiang, a salon owner, and a freelancer) trained by a non-physician instructor and practiced hands-on on a live patient. It is easy to find 3 day training course online: one center charges around US$1,000 and will not provide a certificate, but said such certificate can be easily purchased for about US$10 online. Another center charges around US$1,200 and will provide a hair transplant professional certificate, which is the course the undercover reporter attended. The 3 day training course only took two days to complete.
Hair transplant price in China depends on the client, the instructor recommended charging between US$0.75 to $6 per hair based on the client’s income. $6 per hair for rich client, $1.5 to $1.8 per hair for middle class client. The instructor, who originally studied psychology, never worked in a hospital, learned hair transplant from others, claimed she had trained more than 100 students and told them they can tell their clients that the saline used as graft holding solution is a special culturing fluid and charge an extra US$300-450. The undercover reporter later went through training to “work” as an online sales consultant for a hair loss center that was a Chinese Medicine Hospital several years ago. Her commission based job was to lure clients in by first earning their trust with knowledge in treatment protocols and impressive results from the treatments, then giving the clients a preliminary diagnosis but acting as if she is not very certain so that she can refer them to the hair loss center.
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Hair Stands Straight Up After Transplant

I had a procedure of 3000 grafts placed in the front and now 8 months later, the hair that grew out stands straight up like toothpicks coming out perpendicular to the scalp. Can this be fixed?

The direction that hair grows after a transplant is determined by the transplant surgeon. Some doctors place the hair straight upward reaching for the sky like you reported, while others place them in a radial direction so that the hair looks like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. Some hair restoration procedures (like those of flaps), have hair that grows 90 degrees off pointing to the side. In all of these situations, the transplants or flaps permanently point the direction of the hair.

These are tricky repairs and most of the time the repairs are not able to correct the entire directional issue. I would advise setting up a consultation with me or a good hair transplant doctor in your area with lots of experience (I’m not sure where you’re located) to ascertain what, if anything, can be done to correct the problem.

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Typical strip surgery scar

I am often asked about what a typical strip scar would look like. Not everyone heals this well. This scar can be hidden even with a #2 cut or any reasonable long hair.

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I Had a Hair Transplant 6 Months Ago and Now I Look like This. What Is It? (Photo)

The post-operative picture on the left shows recipient area necrosis (a loss of blood supply to the graft area). This area healed with the scar that you are showing in your 6 months photo as I would have expected (photo to right). You need another hair transplant to fix this. You should ask your surgeon to make it right for you as this reflects a surgical problem.

 

 

 

 


2018-09-14 08:42:26I Had a Hair Transplant 6 Months Ago and Now I Look like This. What Is It? (Photo)

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Hair Transplant for Patient with Oily Scalp

Is a patient with an oily scalp a good candidate for a hair transplant? My scalp is very oily. I want to enchance my hair density by doing hair transplant. However, I am worry about the oil excreted from the scalp will affect the newly transplanted hair grafts.

An oily scalp will not effect a hair transplant, as transplanted hairs grow in either a dry or an oily scalp.

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Using a Blow Dryer After Applying Minoxidil?

Minoxidil leaves hair wet and it takes some time for it to dry sufficiently to be able to apply hair styling product properly. Would it be ok to use a blow dryer soon after applying minoxidil to dry the hair quicker? My concern is a dryer would make the minoxidil ‘evaporate’ before it has had time to be absorbed by the skin. What do you think? Many thanks.

I do not believe using a blow dryer will negatively affect the application of minoxidil on your scalp, but first just give the minoxidil a chance to dry on its own (10-15 minutes). You can try using the blow dryer on the low setting, but the evaporation will be mostly from the non-active alcohol in the solution and not the active minoxidil compound.