Newbie question

[chicagobears]

Hi everyone -

 

This may sound like a dumb question, but I don't know. Going in for my first consult tomorrow. But if I get a HT, the hair that grows, will it be like my old hair? Like when I was younger and had a full head of hair or will it be different from what I was when I was younger?

 

I hear that you regrow your own hair after a HT, but can I expect to have the same or similar type of hairs when it grows back?

 

I'm really hoping so! Let me know and thanks.

[AdamAJ]

They take the hair from the back and/or sides of your head. So however your hair is there will be just like that in the front. Obviously as you age it will most likely change also and become thinner.

[PupDaddy]

Welcome to the forum, chicagobears. When you get a chance, you should read through as many threads on here as you can about hair transplants and what they can and cannot achieve, how they are accomplished, how hair is taken from the back and sides of your head (from what is known as the "safe zone" because hair there is generally resistant to the effects of DHT, which causes hair to stop growing over time, i.e., male pattern baldness) and redistributed to thinning or balding areas of your scalp, and how the transplanted hairs are carefully situated to create an illusion of density (but not actually as dense as it was before you lost hair there), and to understand that a hair transplant only moves hair from one location to another --- it does not multiply hair, i.e., you don't get additional or new hairs from a hair transplant.

 

The very short answer to you your question is that in terms of quality and characteristics, each hair that is transplanted will, when grown out and matured, be the same as it currently is, just at a different place on your scalp. In terms of actual density, generally speaking a hair transplant (or sometimes two or even more transplants) can give you between 35 - 60 follicular units (1 hair, 2-hair, or 3-hair units) per square centimeter of scalp, whereas in your high school hair glory days you probably had somewhere around 90 - 100 follicular units per square centimeter of scalp -- so you might get half the density or so that you had in your best hair years, but top ht docs can get the most cosmetically out of the transplanted hair, through careful attention to hair direction, placement, and recipient site technique, to make it APPEAR that the transplanted hair is more dense (more follicular units per square centimeter) than it actually is.