I recently had a breast reduction performed under General Anesthesia and stated losing a lot of hair. Could general anesthesia cause hair loss?
In some women who have female genetic alopecia (and with what I refer to as fragile hair), we see hair loss that results from stress. Assuming that there is no medical condition going on, this type of stress hair loss takes on two forms. The first form is typical, progressive genetic hair loss which comes on in phases and at different ages, then stabilizes for years before going into another progressive phase. The second form is less common, but it results from stress and often reverses within a year or less. We see a common variation of this second type of hair loss with pregnancy and in some women who have the stress variation, they often see a repetitive pattern of hair loss with stress, re-growth, then loss again with the next stressful reaction.
Stress induced hair loss is also common in men with genetic balding and is often seen as the precipitating cause that starts the process. Most common amongst the social precipitating factors for men include divorce, death or sickness of a family member or close friend, and stress in school or work.