Dr Rajesh Rajput

I am not sure if you are comfortable getting a reply from a surgeon himself. But see my website www.hairlossindia.com for hair medicine and transplant. Make your own openion.

Dear Sahil, 4 months is one hair growth cycle in the body. You need that time before you see improvement in hair growth. You have 1,00,000 hair on the head. Replacing any number will not make you look like before but give a good fullness. Medicines will work if you continue them for 3-4 cycles that means 1-2 years. 2400 grafts means each graft contains 1,2 or 3 hair as per your own natural follicular unit pattern. Surgeon has to maintain the same natural units as you have. Surgeon does not decide the number of hair to be contained in each unit. 3 months is too early to expect a change. Also note that the hair improves 1mm per day and if you look at yourself evreyday in the morror you cannot appriciate the small change. You need to compare your old pictures with the pictures now to know weather there is any change.

Dear Nilesh Shah, thanks for bringing this to my notice. 1. It is essential to take medicines for 4 months before a transplat, to per condition your hair for a transplant. 2 months of medicine and rushing into a transplant with some pretex that you are leaving the place or you will not have leave again or so will coax the surgeon. I will refuse a transplant before completing 4 months of medicine. 2. You have 1,20,000 hair on your head. If you lost everything on the top, you really need large numbe tof grafts. Patients expect evrything to get covered in a small number of grafts which is not possible. They srart by saying cover my front with 1000 grafts then little more on the top and slight cover on the back also. The grafts get laid out far apart and cannot give the new dense looks desired. It does not meet the dreams of the preson. 3. No one counts the number of grafts while implanting. We count the density and the size of the strip to be harvested is decided accordingly to yeild the requiered number of grafts. While doing the surgery I am concentrating on the work I repeated querries at this time are difficult to answer. Best way to keep out of it is to say you can trust me on this issue. 4. It is essential to take the hair growth medicine after the transplant. This will support the growth of the grafts. If not post surgical shock loss is unavoidable complication which will lead to loss of your original weak hair in the area of transplant. So you loose 3000 - 5000 wewak hair instead of strengthening or growing them and grow back only 2400 in place of these. Net gain is unimpressive. 5. On reading the details it appears that this patient has opted for transplant without proper medicitions and not taken the medicines after the surgery. 6. Medicine and transplant are not replacement for one another. You cannot have a transplant because you do not want to take medicines. Both go hand in hand and complement each other for the final outcome. However cases of shock loss are occassional, I had one student from Newzealand whom I could not see for follow up and he could not be emphasised enough to follow the medicines correctly, he had a shock loss. I sent him 4 months of medicine from India, to help him out. Otherwise I make sure this never happens to any of my cases.

This is Dr Rajesh Rajput in reply. One hair growth cycle in the body is 3&1/2 to 4 months. Any medicine you take must show a change in 2 months and good effect at 4 months. Finasteride trial showed that a dose as less as 0.2mg can achieve over 60% DHT reduction. The drug has very good tissue binding. So much so that if discontinued after one or two cycles - 4 to 8 months- the effect is lost only after 4 to 6 months more. Taking finasteride twice a week works with clinical results that can be counted as improved number per sq cm and improved thickness in microns measured on a computerized Folliscope. Finasteride only stops the damage, works better if combined with minoxidil which improved the blood flow. HOw about building up the weak hair. Only stopping the damage does not add to the new hair. Hair needs aminoacids, antioxidants, iron, calcium, trace elements to grow. Or else you stop the minoxidil and all the hair disappeears, because it was just pushed to grow. Ir was never permenantly built up. A comprehensive treatment is required apart from just finasteride and minoxidil. This I have tried and achieved with Cyclical Medicine Program. See rationale on my site www.hairlossindia.com.