Grafts onto exisiting hair

[22years]

if you were to get a transplant where they put the donor hair into hair that was still half okay in the balding area (but would eventually be gone), would the good hairs that came from the back still last a life time or would they be affected by the left over DHT?

 

DHT being the hormone that kills the hair in the first place.

[22years]

if you were to get a transplant where they put the donor hair into hair that was still half okay in the balding area (but would eventually be gone), would the good hairs that came from the back still last a life time or would they be affected by the left over DHT?

 

DHT being the hormone that kills the hair in the first place.

[Bill - Seemiller]

22years,

 

Great question.

 

Transplanted hair isn't affected by DHT because it's "donor dominant". This means that hair taken from the donor area will maintain their "donor" characteristics even when transplanted into balding areas. Though there is no guarantee that surrounding native hair won't be impacted by DHT, the transplanted hair is safe.

 

This concept is why hair transplant surgery works.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[Dr. Ricardo Mejia]

Generally speaking many advertise that transplanted hair lasts a lifetime and is permanent. WHile this is true because of the donor dominance theory, it is not 100% accurate. I give the following illustration to my patients during consultations.

 

Assume you are 22 years old and your donor bank of hair contains 30,000 hairs. When you are 92, do you believe your donor hair will be exactly the same? No. There is some amount of thinning that comes from senescent or old age alopecia as well as some possibility of androgenetic alopecia. The donor hair can also be susceptible to what is called retrograde alopecia where it thins from the bottom up (Generally we are not harvesting from this area). However if when you get to 92 you lose 20-30% of your donor hair bank, you can also lose 20-30% of any transplanted hairs that came from this donor area. (%ages only for illustration) The reason is because the hairs are dynamic and not static and still influenced by the aging process and possibly some DHT influence as well.