IMPORTANT POLL

[Adam561]

Hello everyone,

I’ve been a member of this forum for over 5 years now, and I’ve learned so much from all of you about hair transplants and hair restoration techniques. Your shared experiences and insights have been incredibly valuable to me.

 

I’d like to ask a question that I believe is simple yet interesting: Are hair transplants permanent?

I’m curious to hear about your experiences and thoughts on this. Please participate in the poll and share any additional insights or personal stories in the comments.

Edited June 13 by Adam561

[Delta Bravo]

Great poll, especially for beginners who think transplant is permanent and full stop to their baldness solution!

 

I guess option 4.5,6 can be accepted as a correct answer, as there are so many theories to prove so many different outcomes. 

[ScottishGuy21]

This will be interesting.

Personal opinion is maybe, but I’d also try to tell anyone new to research that no they aren’t. Have the worst case scenario in mind and work from that. 

Age obviously is a massive factor. If you are 30 rather 50 the expectations for it to last permanently narrow. Be prepared for it to at least thin over time. The other big factor is your natural balding pattern. If 10 years after a transplant you start aggressively balding from a NW 3 to a NW6/7 into the donor then chances are the transplanted hair will thin too. Medication can help this but it’s not always effective.

Dr Reddy for example says expect a 20 year shelf life from a transplant, anything above is a bonus 

 

[Adam561]

3 hours ago, ScottishGuy21 said:

This will be interesting.

Personal opinion is maybe, but I’d also try to tell anyone new to research that no they aren’t. Have the worst case scenario in mind and work from that. 

Age obviously is a massive factor. If you are 30 rather 50 the expectations for it to last permanently narrow. Be prepared for it to at least thin over time. The other big factor is your natural balding pattern. If 10 years after a transplant you start aggressively balding from a NW 3 to a NW6/7 into the donor then chances are the transplanted hair will thin too. Medication can help this but it’s not always effective.

Dr Reddy for example says expect a 20 year shelf life from a transplant, anything above is a bonus 

 

I agree. Transplanted hair can become thin and in some cases zero also, but in those cases, the hairline is the last to recede.

[Melvin- Admin]

Nothing in life is permanent except death. Hair transplants will give you many years with hair, just like medication gives you extended years in life. But ultimately father time catches up to all. 

[mr_peanutbutter]

2 hours ago, Melvin- Admin said:

Nothing in life is permanent except death. Hair transplants will give you many years with hair, just like medication gives you extended years in life. But ultimately father time catches up to all. 

this is how i see it too

 

someone mentioned once that zarev patients might look depleted once they hit 80 due to senile alopecia

 

when i read that i thought to mysslf: if that means you have decent hair until then, you won at life

[TakeAction]

Walk around any crowded city street and you'll see NW7s with super thin donor areas. It's not the norm but it does happen.

With medication, all the way up to 2.5 mg dutasteride which blocks 80 percent of scalp DHT, the thinning of donor hair/transplanted hair due to androgenic alopecia will be extremely minimal long term.

The occipital donor is more resistant to DHT long term than the sides, but it can thin to a degree over time. Again, with strong enough medication, this is not a major concern for most.

Aggressive loss - can be permanent or at least very long lasting with medication

Minor loss - most likely, for all intents and purposes, permanent regardless of medication

[Berba11]

Worth bearing in mind that FUE is very young, and more advanced mega & gigasession FUE is just a baby - we don't really have 20-30+ year cases to see how it holds up. Larger session FUE now tests the boundaries of the traditional "safe zone" in a way that smaller session FUE and FUT surgeries didn't/don't. So it remains to be seen how much "permanence" the larger session FUE we're see stacks up to FUT surgeries that take exclusively from the strongest part of the donor area.

I suspect there will be depletion of the transplant over a long period of time, especially without fin/dut to help things along. Whether it will be a level of depletion that bothers anyone into later life is another question. 

[davidn]

43 minutes ago, Berba11 said:

Worth bearing in mind that FUE is very young, and more advanced mega & gigasession FUE is just a baby - we don't really have 20-30+ year cases to see how it holds up. Larger session FUE now tests the boundaries of the traditional "safe zone" in a way that smaller session FUE and FUT surgeries didn't/don't. So it remains to be seen how much "permanence" the larger session FUE we're see stacks up to FUT surgeries that take exclusively from the strongest part of the donor area.

I suspect there will be depletion of the transplant over a long period of time, especially without fin/dut to help things along. Whether it will be a level of depletion that bothers anyone into later life is another question. 

We will all Rock them systems in our 50s

[Melvin- Admin]

3 hours ago, mr_peanutbutter said:

this is how i see it too

 

someone mentioned once that zarev patients might look depleted once they hit 80 due to senile alopecia

 

when i read that i thought to mysslf: if that means you have decent hair until then, you won at life

Exactly, if you were to ask me at 30 if having hair another 35+years would be worth surgery. I would say yes no question. 

[Bhumik Shah MD]

This is a good question.

There is no doubt that there are patients that do well without any medications and look like they have a good head of hair even decades later. There are also some patients that look close to slick bald many years after a transplant. And then there are some in between, the transplant looks good but their balding has continued to progress. 

My approach to young patients that do not want to take medical stabilization is stay CONSERVATIVE CONSERVATIVE CONSERVATIVE. I can't over emphasize this. This way if things progress for the worst, you can at least keep things looking natural as the patient ages. 

Edited June 14 by Bhumik Shah MD

[Gatsby]

What will be interesting I think is with the relatively new use of beard hair as a donor source. As beard hair is DHT resistant, how will a hybrid scalp/beard hair transplant stand up in 20, 30 years time? I hope I’m around long enough to find out! 😉😊

Edited June 14 by Gatsby

[Adam561]

4 hours ago, Gatsby said:

What will be interesting I think is with the relatively new use of beard hair as a donor source. As beard hair is DHT resistant, how will a hybrid scalp/beard hair transplant stand up in 20, 30 years time? I hope I’m around long enough to find out! 😉😊

This is a good point. Let's observe you for the next 10-20 years, 🤣

[Adam561]

18 hours ago, Melvin- Admin said:

Nothing in life is permanent except death. Hair transplants will give you many years with hair, just like medication gives you extended years in life. But ultimately father time catches up to all. 

Agreed. But many patient's coming from different clinics claims that this clinic has assured me 30+ years warranty or I have seen doctors quoting that if it's taken from the safe donor area, then it's permanent. 

[DHT]

Interesting topic, glad to see the votes in favour of yes, haha! As Melvin mentioned, nothing is permanent! 

[Rasputin]

It all depends about your genetic predispositions.

There are some people I see (usually old people though) which I wouldn't even classify as Norwood 7, it's like Norwood 8 or more. There is nothing possible to transplant for them, but let's say they did some procedures when they were younger then it wouldn't last without medications.

However there are also people (even older) that have hair loss but just in the vertex, or just on the front, and their donor area seems really strong, like no thinning, only in specific part. In these cases, a hair transplant would definitely last for life (obviously talking about older people, if you're less than 45 then we can't predict so well how it's going).

But as Gatsby mentioned, I really do believe BHT is the way to go in hair restoration. They are DHT resistant (actually thrive with it). Some cases show they grow longer on the scalp, although we don't really know the real reason.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15544779/

That's why I'm looking forward to know whether Verteporfin would regenerates hair follicle. In that case, I don't see why BHT shouldn't be use all the time mixed with scalp hair, and this even if the patient have a decent donor to begin with (unless someone wants to use 5 alpha blockers, which I wouldn't really understand unless one has benign prostate hyperplasia, or just much different BHT characteristics than scalp hair.)

Many years ago I was really impressed with the work of Dr Umar and Dr Wds, but when I see Dr Pittella's work now, I think we got to a next level of BHT smart use.

 

[Al - Moderator]

It's all going o be patient specific. If two people get a hair transplant at 25 when they are both NW 3, but one was destined to be NW 7 (if he hadn't had a HT) by age 40 and the other is destined to only become a NW 4 at 75, then of course the hair transplant on the one losing hair and becoming a NW 7 isn't going to look as good as the other one once they both reach age 40. On top of that the first one would have needed several more transplants over the years to try to keep up while the 2nd one was just fine with the one hair transplant for 20 years. It's not a simple thing. You can't just say it lasts forever or it doesn't last forever.