Question:
What is the best technique for getting full looking results in a hair transplant?
Answer:
The best results in hair transplantation, at least in regards to thickness and fullness, are with any well performed technique on those patients who have or will have minimal baldness. It is a matter of supply and demand. With male pattern baldness we are dealing with a an increasing demand for a diminishing supply. For women with high hairlines and no hair loss, it is a different story and a variety of approaches can give thick dense results. The hairline lowering/forehead reduction being my favorite approach. Each prospective hair surgery patient has to be evaluated with an individual realistic plan.
One can get great density by moving hair with flaps, repeated follicular grafting harvested from strips or tiny punches. But only a small portion on an extensively bald man’s scalp can get this result. A small area of baldness , however , can have a thick , full looking result and if the pattern is not progressive (rare), the result will be long standing. I have been involved in over 40 years of scalp surgery going from small plugs to larger plugs to pedicle flaps (which I was the first to perform in the U.S. in 1975) to minigrafts/micrografts to follicular unit grafts from strip harvesting , and back to a return to tiny punch grafts but in huge numbers. However, other than for the introduction of hair loss retarding medications such as Propecia, there has been no change in the transplant prognosis for those destined to be class 6 or 7 baldness other than a result that frames the face with a natural appearance and little or no cover in the crown. One answer for those who want the appearance of a full head of hair all through life is to consider a non surgical hair system (hairpiece).