Do Body Hair Transplants Work?

[Melvin- Admin]

For those of you who've had BHT, did it work? Did you notice a difference in texture? I would love to gather the communities thoughts and input.

 

Do Body Hair Transplants Work?

[LonelyGraft]

I’ve never had it but I think the consensus among doctors that perform it is that beard hair works the best out of all body hair.

[Curious]

I've had arm, leg, chest and beard and they do grow.  Some of it took more than 12 months to start growing. 

[LonelyGraft]

22 minutes ago, Curious said:

I've had arm, leg, chest and beard and they do grow.  Some of it took more than 12 months to start growing. 

Really? Just to START growing?

[Curious]

More than 12 months to start growing.  Body hair supposedly has different growth cycles.  Beard hair is different, thicker and should be placed back behind the hair line. 

[Gabreille Nelson Mukhia]

On ‎8‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 6:21 AM, Melvin-Moderator said:

For those of you who've had BHT, did it work? Did you notice a difference in texture? I would love to gather the communities thoughts and input.

 

Do Body Hair Transplants Work?

I think I is such a subjective topic. The candidacy of body hair as a donor seems correlated to factors it's calibre, density, growth rate among many others. I have seen some patients with a fair growth where the chest hair was planted. But in majority, not a very satisfactory survival rate. Plus, these hair from the chest etc tend to shed off and grow back after a huge gap unlike beard and scalp donor grafts. 

[Melvin- Admin]

6 hours ago, Gabreille Nelson Mukhia said:

I think I is such a subjective topic. The candidacy of body hair as a donor seems correlated to factors it's calibre, density, growth rate among many others. I have seen some patients with a fair growth where the chest hair was planted. But in majority, not a very satisfactory survival rate. Plus, these hair from the chest etc tend to shed off and grow back after a huge gap unlike beard and scalp donor grafts. 

Interesting, at Eugenix what yields the best beard hair?

[Gabreille Nelson Mukhia]

On 8/25/2019 at 7:19 PM, Melvin-Moderator said:

Interesting, at Eugenix what yields the best beard hair?

I'm sorry. I didn't understand your question...

[Sean]

Beard hairs may be good for crown or filler hairs or scar repair hairs.  Chest and nape are absolutely not worth it and most probably die in the process of extraction.  Nape is absolutely probably the worst to utilize.  Talk about unnatural and damaging.  

Very few doctors can do minimal extractions and show they did get growth with these “other” hairs.  Others may need to do over 5-10,000 extractions to get similar yields.

None of these alternate hairs should be used on hairline itself.  

 

Also, keep in mind, if you take finasteride you cant have these hairs because the drug has adverse effects towards them.

[Melvin- Admin]

6 hours ago, transplantedphil said:

Can you discuss this anymore please? Why is it unnatural and damaging?

Nape hair isn’t really safe, a lot of men who suffer from genetic hair loss. 

[LaserCap]

Early 90' work....nape hair was used.  Back then it was strictly FUT. Thus, if you see scars down low, you know it was done around that time.  The problem was, particularly if the patient was experiencing retrograde, he would lose that hair anyway.  So. once they figured out what was going on, after they started grafting from behind the ear. This is where the finest hair can be found. This is important now-a days particularly if the patient is going to have hairline work.

I am aware of a few patients  that did, and/or are planning on body hair.  The problem is, most - if not all - are single hairs and they do not offer a lot of density.

Some years ago I gave some thought to the idea, if body hair was to be transplanted to the head, it would eventually grow like "head" hair.  After much discussion with the doctors i worked with, the consensus was, the "area: would have an impact on the hair, but not enough to make it grow like the native hair we all share.  Thus, if I was to suggest a body hair transplant, it would be to areas behind the mid back and only if the patient had no donor left.

I actually thing that body hair would be good for eyebrow restoration.  Never saw this procedure however.

I' ve seen plenty of beard hair used.  Works fine. What hair you decide to use, however, is directly correlated to what donor you have/don't have. Why use any of it if you have plenty of donor.

 

[Curious]

Beard hair is wirey, chest hair is fairly good, but curly.  Body hair will largely remain the same on top of your head as it was when it was in its original location.  There is one difference, body hair can grow longer when relocated to the scalp.  That has been my experience.  Arm hair worked well for me because they are nice fine, straight hairs that gave me added density.

If you use finasteride and your body hair seems to be the same, that is you have not lost any noticeable amount, I would not hesitate to use finasteride after a bht.

 

 

[Melvin- Admin]

11 hours ago, Curious said:

Beard hair is wirey, chest hair is fairly good, but curly.  Body hair will largely remain the same on top of your head as it was when it was in its original location.  There is one difference, body hair can grow longer when relocated to the scalp.  That has been my experience.  Arm hair worked well for me because they are nice fine, straight hairs that gave me added density.

If you use finasteride and your body hair seems to be the same, that is you have not lost any noticeable amount, I would not hesitate to use finasteride after a bht.

 

 

Do you mind posting any pictures? I'm curious to see what BHT looks like, it seems that I always hear of guys having different forms of BHT done, but I never actually see how it looks. The most i've seen is beard hair. There are a few lucky people who tend to have similar beard hair, as the hair on their head. I would say those of African descent and East Asian descent have the closest beard hair to head hair.

Unfortunately, for me my beard and scalp hair are totally different 😥

[Westview]

Dr. Umar does the best BHT work I've seen out there.  But he's not cheap.

He can also only do about 2,000 grafts per day, so for an 8,000 graft job he would have to perform 4 straight days of surgery.

Some of his work:

 

Edited August 30, 2019 by Westview

[Sean]

On 8/28/2019 at 11:42 AM, transplantedphil said:

Can you discuss this anymore please? Why is it unnatural and damaging?

Sure, i can even show you.  Tried to PM you.  

[Sean]

1 hour ago, Westview said:

Dr. Umar does the best BHT work I've seen out there.  But he's not cheap.

He can also only do about 2,000 grafts per day, so for an 8,000 graft job he would have to perform 4 straight days of surgery.

Some of his work:

 

Have you had surgery with Dr Umar?

Some good determining factors are—

How many grafts did these folks need for coverage?  

Does it mention how many hair groupings per graft , example - 1 hair or 2 hair or 3 hair grafts etc or the type of body hair?

In normal everyday or outdoor lighting, will these results look natural? 

 

[Al - Moderator]

3 hours ago, Sean said:

In normal everyday or outdoor lighting, will these results look natural?

 

For the repair patients, it will look a heck of a lot better than it did before.

 

[Westview]

13 hours ago, Sean said:

Quote

 

Have you had surgery with Dr Umar?

Some good determining factors are—

How many grafts did these folks need for coverage?  

Does it mention how many hair groupings per graft , example - 1 hair or 2 hair or 3 hair grafts etc or the type of body hair?

In normal everyday or outdoor lighting, will these results look natural? 

 

I have not.  I'm just going by what I see from his videos and pics.

This is his site: https://www.dermhairclinic.com/

 

[Westview]

9 hours ago, transplantedphil said:

This feels more like advertising (sorry)

Gee, I must have missed my commission cheque in the mail

[Melvin- Admin]

10 hours ago, BeHappy said:

 

For the repair patients, it will look a heck of a lot better than it did before.

 

That is so true, we forget about this, and honestly any improvement is good.

[Sean]

No doubt , those that have been disfigured or extensive cases “may” get some result.  Hairs grafted in smaller sessions may be less riskier the  larger sessions. There are a lot of factors to this and are not disclosed by some doctors.

However, it is not the same for all repair patients.  A repair attempt like this can make things worse, add ridging, scar tissue, damage existing transplanted or native hairs.

you can pretty much say goodbye to finasteride or propecia if you take the bht route.  

 

[Lane604]

On 8/28/2019 at 5:39 PM, Sean said:

Also, keep in mind, if you take finasteride you cant have these hairs because the drug has adverse effects towards them.

Wow, I hadn't thought of that. I am currently considering both starting finasteride and having a BHT but now I guess I will have to choose between the two... Do you know if CB (clascoterone) is safe for body hair?

[Lane604]

On 8/30/2019 at 8:15 PM, Sean said:

A repair attempt like this can make things worse, add ridging, scar tissue, damage existing transplanted or native hairs.

What's ridging?

Scar tissue in the donor area?

Edited November 4, 2019 by Lane604

[California]

Interesting topic. Reminded me of an older write up by Dr. Bhatti. Sharing here because of it's relevance:

My ABC of BHT:

BHT is presently my favorite field! 
Though FUT is undoubtedly the Gold Standard of surgical hair restoration and shall always remain so, FUE rose in popularity due mostly to the fact that it has opened the horizons to a limitless supply of grafts by expanding the traditional donor availability. The other advantages may be debateable but this has no opposition even from die-hard FUT surgeons. Thanks to FUE the patient base has markedly increased in size. Repair cases and cases with extensive balding which were shunned earlier, can again think of getting back a “head full of hair.”

I have a very different approach to a client with balding which I feel shall be progressive in the long term. I goad all patients with a long term plan for their progressive balding to allow me to harvest beard grafts (besides scalp grafts of course) for a better hairline definition and mid-scalp fill and keep their remaining scalp grafts as a rain check for future requirements especially in the crown.

For example, for a 25 year old with type 3 vertex pattern, I would plant scalp hair within the first 1.5 cm along the hairline, mix scalp grafts with beard grafts in a laid down optimal ratio till the highest point of the head. For the crown area I would encourage him to accept a low density preferably with chest grafts or chest grafts with a sprinkling of scalp grafts. I never use beard hair for the crown area. It is only to be used for the mid-scalp and just behind the hairline.

For me and my patients “only ABC is GOOD!” : I am not fond of using any hair other than beard, chest and axilla (in this order of preference) since leg, arm, belly hair, in my experience, take a long time to grow if at all. 
(A- Axilla, B- Beard, C-Chest). In darker racial group I do not venture outside the ‘shadow area’ of the beard which lies on and behind the jawline and above the Adam’s apple due to the possible risk of visible scarring). 

Given the fact that in a second session, you can harvest usually half the number of grafts again after a gap of 6 months, realization shall dawn upon you that an average patient (except East Asian) has a large donor area just waiting to be harvested. This realization is fast becoming the game changer today in the field of surgical hair restoration. As you read my thoughts on BHT, more and more clinics the world over are busy honing their skills to harvest more and more body grafts with lesser and lesser transection rates. Time is also of the essence and therefore the growing demand for motorized systems, especially the Safe Scribe which is simple, safe and efficient.

Body hair, mostly alone, has been routinely used at my clinic for the following indications-

1. Hair transplant cripples
2. Extensive baldness with a poor donor area of the scalp and,
3. Camouflaging wide FUT scars. 
You can see some of my cases later where almost exclusive BHT was done for want of healthy scalp grafts. This is slowly becoming my core competence area.
I am wedded to the Harris Safe Scribe System since 2010. It works very well for me even for BHT. With a surgical background I am more comfortable working with motorized systems than manual instrumentation. I use the manual punch only for areas like legs, arms etc.- areas I am not very fond of doing since this hair in my experience does not grow to the full satisfaction of my clients and myself. I use the following punches for BHT- 0.7 mm customized sharp punch for beard grafts harvest when there are mostly singles and if 2-3 I may use a 0.8 mm punch
If there be any questions you may have for me, I would be pleased to answer to the best of my ability.