Ten Years After hair Transplantation

Almost ten years after his hair transplantation. Now he is at his mid sixties.

Let’s follow the study to see what happened to his hair after ten years.

From the vertex view photos before the surgery, we can see hair at vertex area is getting finer too. To prevent a second surgery, Finasteride was prescribed immediately after the surgery.

When comparing the two vertex view photos(taken 2002 and 2011), we can see that Finasteride doesn’t help him to prevent hair loss too much. Therefor we can rule out the impact of Finasteride on the hair transplant surgery result.

2002	2011

The goals of continue study are to compare the quality of hair between the donor and recipient site, and between modified follicular unit (double follicular unit) and single follicular unit.

Thirty hair each was clipped from the modified follicular unit site.and single follicular unit site.

Ten hair each was clipped from left temporal area, right temporal area and mid-rear donor site.

Method and Observation

See Hair View photo (our left side, modified FU) and Top View photo( our right side, single FU).

We can see there are two kinds of hair at both sides, course hair and fine hair, picture A has more both sizes of hair.

When we clipped hair we picked the course one from both side for comparison purpose.

	Modified Follicular Units are on the left section of the coverage area (Our left-hand side)	Follicular Units are on the right section of the coverage area (Our right-hand side)
Date	Hairline View	Top View	Front View
10/23/2011

Date

Recipient Site
(hair diameter in micron)

Donor Site
(hair diameter in micron)

10/23/2011

Modified Follicular Unit	Single Follicular Unit
Average 58.38	Average 52.2

Left temporal	Mid	Right temporal
57.7	59	56.25

Average 57.65

Result
We use hair diameter to compare the quality of the hair. The courser of the hair means the better quality of the hair.

Our control group is the donor hair. 10 years after the hair transplantation, the diameter of hair of modified FU is very close to the donor site hair( 58.38 vs 57.65 micron). But single FU hair is 10%( 52.2 vs 57.65) smaller than donor hair.

Discussion
He is taking Finasteride but from vertex photos we know the impact of the medication to his hair is insignificant.
So far we always believe in that transplanted hair will have the same quality and same life span as donor hair. There are a few reports mentioned that chubby grafts has better growth rate than skinny one (quantity aspect) but never has any report mentioned about quality of the regrowth hair.

From the above study we found that the hair grow from modified FU, its keep the same size as donor hair but the diameter of single FU is 10% less . it means the size of hair is 24% smaller at single FU hair.( 26.1*26.1*pi/29.18*29.19*pi=76%).

Additional to it we always use chubby graft, if you received skinny graft, the different between modified and skinny graft will much bigger.

So far there is no study about the impact of graft quality to the life time of the transplanted hair. But from studies on the impacts of graft quality to the regrowth hair quality and quantity, we can assume that it will have some impact on the life span of the transplanted hair.

More to Read:
Comparison Study between the Follicular Unit and Modified-Follicular Unit (Ten Years before)