Follicular Unit Hair Transplants

Hair transplants have its own history which spans over decades. Every new technique in hair restoration has brought better results than its predecessor. The first transplant did not begin on the scalp but on the eyebrows.

Before the 2nd World War, Dr. Okuda of Japan helped accidents victims to recover their lost their eyelashes and eyebrows through transplanting of hair. When the war started, his discovery of hair transplant procedures went unknown until 20 years later.

In 1959, Dr. Norman Orentreich started a new area of surgery when he published on the use of hair replacement surgery. During this period, surgeons move balding-resistant hair follicles to the balding areas of the scalp. They took healthy hairs from the fringe, or back and sides of the head for the transplantation.

At that time, the doctors tried to find out if the hair follicles were able to resist balding because of the locations that they were selected from or the inherent properties in the follicles. Knowing this will solve the question of "do hair transplants work?"

However, they later discovered that the life span of the hair depend on the hair follicles and not the locations where they implanted the hairs. This phenomenon was known as Donor Dominance. The future of surgical hair loss treatment was imminent.

Since then surgeons work on many procedures. Initially, the first procedure had some flaws and the results were not up to their expectation even though they relied on the concept of moving hairs from donor sites to the balding areas.

During the 1960s and 1970s, they grafted 15 to 25 hairs in a round plug pattern. These hair plugs look ugly and unnatural. Once they are implanted, they are permanent. So, you will end up looking funny with these plugs.

Then in the 1980s, the procedure in hair restoration began to improve. They develop enhanced versions of mini grafts. However, they still looked like plugs but they are smaller than its predecessor. Each plug contained 5 to 8 hairs. Today, this size is still being used in hair replacement.

Slowly, the number of grafts began to diminish. The normal graft today has 1 to 8 hairs. In one session, you can expect up to 800 hair grafts. Although the appearance may not look natural but the technique continue to improve.

Then came the advent of follicle unit micro-grafting. Each graft consists of 1 to 4 hairs. This is equivalent to the number of hairs in a follicle for a healthy head of hair. Therefore, the insertion of thousands of follicular units will give the impression of natural hair.

Today, the hair transplants have offer amazing results for balding people. No one will can tell if you have a hair transplant recently. This achievement has taken a few decades based on the many improvements over the conception of the idea of transplanting.