Dr. Cole's Comments

Offering hair transplant surgery to the young patient is like offering candy to my five year old. They both say yes, more please!

Listen, I know from years of experience that you are hurting inside about your hair loss. We hate to see this in any young man. You would be surprised how many men I see each day who are in their 40s or 50s who had hair transplant surgery in their early 20s. all of them say the same thing, “if I could do it all over again, I’d do nothing”.

Every 20 year old I see tells me the same thing also, “I will not care about my hair loss when I am 30 or 40”. Every 30 or 40 year old I see tells me they would rather have their hair, but would rather be bald than look unnatural. Certainly, the methods we have today are much better than the ones we had 20 years ago. Unlike 20 years ago, we now know that hair loss is progressive over the life of the patient. We know that if you have excessive hair loss in your 20s, you will have an advanced degree of loss in your 40s. Why it took 40 years for most physicians to recognize that hair loss was progressive, I do not know. It took me about 1 to 2 years to realize that what the older physicians taught me about the progressive nature of hair loss was rubbish.

First, you will not solve your problem in one procedure. it will be an on going process for the remainder of your life or until your donor reserves are exhausted. Second, we have the capacity today with FUE to remove your grafts that are placed today should you desire to un-do the process. You can also shave your head after FUE and look reasonably normal for a period of time. As you potentially loose hair on the side, you may wind up with a gap between the grafted areas and the sides. This may necessitate removal of the grafts at a later date. We may also need to pull the hair line graft out and move the line up later on to make the loss in the back match the hair line location in the front.

You need about 2500 to 3000 grafts initially. I do not recommend you do this. I recommend you wait and shave your head. I am very sorry to say this. How is your body hair? I do not recommend you do surgery based on a large quantity of body hair, but it may be valuable to you at a later date as we gain more experience with body hair.

Good luck with your situation. I hope the best for you.

John Cole, MD
www.forhair.com
1-800-368-4247