Body hair transplant success rates?

[Patrick_Joyce]

There seems to be a lot of varying opinions on the success rate of body hair transplants. Across the board it seems to be agreed upon by surgeons that beard grafts have a high success and yield rate but in terms of body hair from elsewhere (chest, abdomen, pubic, etc) some of the most top not surgeons have wildly different views.

Surgeons such as Umar, Wds and Arvind state that if handled properly and the correct extraction techniques are used there is no reason for chest or other body hair to have a low yield; the only reason for poor yield would basically be due to the surgeon himself. Just about all of their patients who have posted their transplant journey's and have had transplants with body hair grafts from the chest or elsewhere seem to all have had good results and be happy with it.

Other top doctors on the other hand such as those from Eugenix, C*** and Basinga all seem to have the same mindset that chest or other body hair in general has poor yield regardless of the surgeon doing the procedure and how talented they are; the yield is just poor because of unknown circumstances.

So which side is more accurate? Does the success of chest or other body hair transplants rest within the hands of the surgeon?

[AB2000]

When using hair from the chest, the problem is that it is harder to extract safely and avoid transection.  From what I understand these have a sharp angle when growing out from the surface of the skin.  Normal tools might damage them without taking ample time and care.  At that point is it worth it to the surgeon to go for these?  If they need to perform at a certain rate to obtain a good return on their services, then you can see why many won't bother.  Another reason why it's hard to find places that will do these BHT's it that the result might not look good.  Even if it's possible, will the patient's air grow out like a Brillo Pad?  Why have your work put there the like that?  It's a fine balance mixing in body hairs.

Moral of the story - don't push for it if they are not comfortable, and shop elsewhere.

[Turkhair]

Look at Gatsby 

Nothing but body hair.

 

[Patrick_Joyce]

3 hours ago, Turkhair said:

Look at Gatsby 

Nothing but body hair.

 

He had 6,000 scalp hairs and several thousand beard hairs, only a small number of chest and pubic

[Gatsby]

4 hours ago, Turkhair said:

Look at Gatsby 

Nothing but body hair.

 

@Turkhair over 6k scalp grafts and over 7k beard grafts. Just over 1k was body hair and mostly in the donor scars.

[Gatsby]

6 hours ago, Patrick_Joyce said:

There seems to be a lot of varying opinions on the success rate of body hair transplants. Across the board it seems to be agreed upon by surgeons that beard grafts have a high success and yield rate but in terms of body hair from elsewhere (chest, abdomen, pubic, etc) some of the most top not surgeons have wildly different views.

Surgeons such as Umar, Wds and Arvind state that if handled properly and the correct extraction techniques are used there is no reason for chest or other body hair to have a low yield; the only reason for poor yield would basically be due to the surgeon himself. Just about all of their patients who have posted their transplant journey's and have had transplants with body hair grafts from the chest or elsewhere seem to all have had good results and be happy with it.

Other top doctors on the other hand such as those from Eugenix, C*** and Basinga all seem to have the same mindset that chest or other body hair in general has poor yield regardless of the surgeon doing the procedure and how talented they are; the yield is just poor because of unknown circumstances.

So which side is more accurate? Does the success of chest or other body hair transplants rest within the hands of the surgeon?

Body hair has a much lower survival rate but more importantly it has a much shorter anagen phase. When I saw Dr Sethi 12 months post op he told me that practically all of the chest and (pubic hair in the scars) were growing. I believe that using oral minoxidil helps to extend the anagen phase of all of my hair growth.

[gillenator]

I agree Gats, whether topical or oral, the growth phase can be effectively extended with Minoxidil.

[Patrick_Joyce]

7 minutes ago, Gatsby said:

Body hair has a much lower survival rate but more importantly it has a much shorter anagen phase. When I saw Dr Sethi 12 months post op he told me that practically all of the chest and (pubic hair in the scars) were growing. I believe that using oral minoxidil helps to extend the anagen phase of all of my hair growth.

Oh ok, because Dr. Umar said with appropriate extraction techniques, there's no reason for the survival and yield to be lower.

But all of yours did survive?

[AB2000]

1 hour ago, Patrick_Joyce said:

Oh ok, because Dr. Umar said with appropriate extraction techniques, there's no reason for the survival and yield to be lower.

But all of yours did survive?

In Dr. Umar's case he's had custom designs made for his FUE tools to accommodate his patients who have been coming in for HT repairs and have run out of normal donor.  In more recent years he has also advertised for patients with afro hair, meaning that like chest hairs, they grow out from the skin at sharper angles and are time consuming and hard to remove safely.  I haven't had surgery there with the newest FUE tool but it is supposed to be relatively fast and effective at extracting a wide variety of graft types.

[Patrick_Joyce]

8 hours ago, AB2000 said:

In Dr. Umar's case he's had custom designs made for his FUE tools to accommodate his patients who have been coming in for HT repairs and have run out of normal donor.  In more recent years he has also advertised for patients with afro hair, meaning that like chest hairs, they grow out from the skin at sharper angles and are time consuming and hard to remove safely.  I haven't had surgery there with the newest FUE tool but it is supposed to be relatively fast and effective at extracting a wide variety of graft types.

Oh I see, so his success rates with body hair are higher because of his specialized tools he uses?

But then wait about Dr. Arvind who also stated that the survival rates of body hair shouldn't be any lower with proper techniques?

[Patrick_Joyce]

9 hours ago, gillenator said:

I agree Gats, whether topical or oral, the growth phase can be effectively extended with Minoxidil.

Would using minoxidil effect the survival rates of body hair grafts after transplant?

[AB2000]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5447335/

This a reference to an Indian dematology journal:

 

[Bert]

On 8/4/2023 at 5:31 AM, Gatsby said:

Body hair has a much lower survival rate but more importantly it has a much shorter anagen phase. When I saw Dr Sethi 12 months post op he told me that practically all of the chest and (pubic hair in the scars) were growing. I believe that using oral minoxidil helps to extend the anagen phase of all of my hair growth.

did you have any sides from oral minoxidil? and how often do you take them

[Gatsby]

1 hour ago, Bert said:

did you have any sides from oral minoxidil? and how often do you take them

Luckily I have no side effects from oral minoxidil. I take 5mg of oral minoxidil every night.

[omarca]

I got 5000+ grafts of those 2500ish where from scalp and the other 2500ish where from beard and chest with Dr Mwamba in Brussels @Dr. Patrick Mwamba….and after 1 year of the HT (october 2023)…i visited my trichologist and all grafts grew (density that was planned was as planned). May be visiting mwamba next year for touchup. Thread coming soon ! 

Edited October 15, 2023 by omarca

[gillenator]

Please put up lots of pics; before and all progress photos.