On March 21st, Dr. Jon E. Mendelsohn, medical director of Advanced Cosmetic Surgery & Laser Center and his team will be performing a Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) on a 51 year-old male patient named Mark. This full-day procedure, done under local anesthesia will involve extracting follicular units from the patient’s chest hair and implanting them into the crown of his head, where he is experiencing male pattern baldness. The patient will be awake and comfortable during this procedure, and able to converse with Dr. Mendelsohn and his team and even take a lunch break or read a book.
Says Mendelsohn, “There are two techniques that are used today for hair transplants. The “strip” harvesting method or more common method involves removing strips of skin from the patient’s scalp in an area where there is good hair growth, and then grafting them to the thinning or balding areas. There are incisions and sutures or staples involved, and the procedure can cause some linear scarring.”
He continues, “With the FUE method, however, we extract individual follicular units, each containing anywhere from 1-4 hairs. The hair can come from anyplace on a patients’ body where there is substantial hair growth – including the underarms, legs, back or chest. In Mark’s case we are using his chest hair. After extracting the hairs, we will implant the grafts one at a time by making small needle size (1mm) puncture to the scalp. There are no sutures or staples involved, and no linear incisions are made to the scalp. There is minimal if any scarring, and no down time with this procedure.
The transplanted airs start to grow by the third month, and continue to grow at the rate of approximately 1 inch every 3 months. The new hair is fully mature at the 12-month period.”
Mendelsohn adds, “In most cases patient’s the hair in the follicles being harvested are a different color than the hair on their scalp. In Mark’s case his chest hairs are starting to gray, so he will be having his chest hair dyed to match his natural hair color a few days before the procedure.
And as we all know, the hair texture can be dramatically different on various parts of our body. Since we will be using this patient’s chest hair, we will be blending it such a way with the scalp hair in such a natural that it will look extremely natural.”
