Follicular Unit Hair Transplant

It is a common knowledge that baldness occurs in degrees and is a gradual phenomenon. Since it is not possible to convey the extent of baldness in words, a classification system was developed by Dr. Norwood. This is the most commonly used sytem today, although other more complicated systems are also available. Broadly speaking, Norwood classification attempts to divide baldness in seven stages with stage I  being normal adult hairline and stage VII being total possible baldness. Although, there are many flaws in this system, it still gives a basic idea regarding the extent of baldness in an individual. Stage I Essentially normal adult male hairline (not to be confused with 'juvenile hairline'). Temporal recessions are well defined   with frontal hairline in normal position. No miniaturisation in crown region. Stage II The frontal hairline shows slight recession(< 2 cm), with more pronounced recession in  temporal area. The "A" vari...

There was a very interesting news item in field of hair transplant which I would like to share. This concerns cause of male pattern alopecia. It is a known fact that in male pattern balding (Androgenetic alopecia), hair follicles don't disappear. They become so small by a process called “miniaturization” that they are not visible to naked eye. Although, we know that DHT is responsible for this process, how exactly it causes miniaturization of hair roots is still not known. One theory of miniaturization says that DHT causes stem cell depletion in hair follicles of bald areas. A new study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation , tries to shed some light on this.  The research team led by Dr. Costarelis, MD collected cell samples from bald and non bald areas from the same persons and counted the number of stem cells present. They were surprised to find that bald areas had the same number of stem cells as hair bearing areas. When they looked further, they found that an...