Multiple hairs per follicle??

[RCWest]

I was looking closely at the transplant I had 15+ years ago, and noticed several of the individual follicles had several hairs per follicle in them. What is up with this?? The hair on my sides is too thick to really tell if it is the follicles themselves doing this, or a byproduct of something freaky happening during the surgery or healing. I counted at least 12 individual grafts that contained a follicle like this. Anyone else have this or is it normal?

[Bill - Seemiller]

RCWest,

 

Hair transplants have come a long way in 15 years. It's possible that some of the hair groupings that were transplanted were old school "mini-grafts" which typically contain 4 to 8 hair follicles per bundle. However, if you'd like us to comment more specifically on your case, please feel free to post some photos.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[RCWest]

Ooops sorry I wasn't more clear . I had my grafts done when they had just started doing the 1-4 hair per graft surgeries. A few individual follicles (hole where one hair should be coming out of) have 2 or 3 hairs growing out of them. It's not hurting anything, and it's great for coverage, but I wanted to know if it is normal or something that happened during surgery.

Edited August 4, 2010 by RCWest

[Dr. Michael Beehner]

Dear RC West,

First of all, by definition, a single hair follicle can only have one hair growing out from it. It is impossible for two hairs to come off of the same follicle. Obviously, it is hard for you to know the number of follicles under any given group of hairs, since the follicle resides completely under the skin.

It sounds like what you have seen may have resulted from "pairing" of FU grafts. This means that, for example, your doctor may have inserted a two-hair FU into a small slit opening, and then later on had some extra 1-hair or 2-hair grafts and slipped one of them in along side the previously placed 2-hair graft in the same slit. Many doctors do this in the front-central area to increase density somewhat. However, when you look at one of these, it can look like an awfully lot of hairs coming from a tiny opening all together. In contrast, when we in our clinic place a DFU (double follicular unit graft), the slit is slightly longer and the normal spacing between the two FU's within the DFU are maintained and it looks pretty darn normal. In contrast, when two FU's are "paired", they can look concentrated in density, and it especially looks bad if it is done anywhere near the front hairline.

Mike Beehner, M.D.

[RCWest]

Thank you Dr. Beehner. I'll bet this is exactly what happened. I don't know why the doctor didn't take the time to make a few extra slits. I could have used more single hair follicles in the hairline.

[Dr. William Lindsey]

I was just going to type "ask him" to you to ask your doctor. But then I see that you had your surgery years ago. Years ago, that was common, and was itself a huge improvement over plugs!

 

While work being done now is really good, I bet that in 20 years, this same response will be applicable to today's results. Things will continue to improve making older techniques obsolete.

 

Consider a 1995 desktop computer to an iphone today....

 

 

Dr. Lindsey McLean VA

[RCWest]

Dr. Lindsey, you may have heard of the place that did my previous work. It was called The Professional Hair Institute in Chesapeake, VA. I believe they closed or moved in the late '90s. Every time I went for a procedure they had a different physician, and they were all in the early stages of training (I didn't know back then...I was young!). Dr. Bradley Wolf is probably the better of them. Also Dr. Richard Gianotto (heard lots of bad stuff about him lately), and Dr. Mark Baxa in Carolina. While all grafts grew in healthy, I now question some of their decisions. Everyone says it looks good so I guess I got lucky. Now I need density as I've lost a bunch of native hair in the past 15 or so years.

[Dr. Michael Beehner]

One other thought occurred to me on what would give a viewer the impression you described of a bunch of hairs coming out of a small space on the head, and that is if the graft was "pitted," which looks like the hairs are coming out a dark hole, and they usually look compressed. This was commonly seen 15-20 years ago when some clinics had their techs put the grafts in a little deeper to make sure they wouldn't fall out, or when roundish grafts were put in slits and fit better when the top of the graft was tucked down under the slit, thus leading to the "pitted" look. I will attach two photos, one which shows pitting close-up and the other from a distance in a crown that we fixed (not done by us, sorry!) in which the pitting is evident especially over on the right side.

Mike Beehner, M.D.

[RCWest]

Dr. Beehner, on the bottom photo, why do some of the grafts look dark or red? I have some grafts that stayed like that, though it only really shows after a hot shower.

 

I do have some grafts that are slightly pitted, but they grew fine. Some of my normal flush with the skin grafts have what appears to be 2 or 3 hairs in one follicle. I think those are the ones with multiple grafts in one hole. I'm just glad everything grew out healthy and none failed to grow!