Active Hair Loss

Hair plugs is a term that is not used much anymore.  Generally, you will hear the term hair implants or hair transplants when people describe this hair restoration procedure.  Hair plugs was actually an apt term when this medical technique was first used for two reasons.  Now, the procedures doctors used are so far removed from the idea of a plug that it is really a misnomer to use this term.

In the 1950’s, when hair transplants were first being used in this country, the surgeon would actually remove a round plug of scalp which still had good hair growth.  This was taken from the posterior area of the head because men suffering from male pattern baldness do not generally lose their hair here.  This plug would contain between ten and fifteen hairs which were still growing.  The surgeon would next make an incision in the bald area of the scalp and insert this plug.  He (surgeons at this time were almost always men) would then sew the plug in.  It was a bloody, messy procedure which required quite a bit of recuperation time and left scaring.  Also, the resulting hair growth did look like the tufts of hair that are plugged into a cheap doll’s head.  Thus the two reasons this name stuck.

Fast forward fifty years and we now have a procedure that is cleaner, neater, and leaves no scarring.  Direct hair implantation allows the surgeon to remove individual hair follicles, or natural grouping of two to three, and implant them into the bald area with no incision.  A specially designed medical instrument is used which allows this manipulation.  The surgeon now has complete control over the directional growth of the implanted hair which allows for a very natural look.  Although the name is really a misnomer now, hair plugs do give a man suffering from male pattern baldness his hair back.

I have just one question. Why is it that men have several different ways to treat their balding problems but for women about the only alternative is to buy a wig or wear a hat. This doesn’t seem fair as hair loss in women is a real and growing problem. In fact, fully 40% of the cases of balding and hair thinning that are reported to physicians are by women and not men. I appears that finally the hair restoration community is taking notice of this problem and moving in the direction of new and powerful ways to treat female hair loss.

One method that has been very successful for men is hair implant surgery. This procedure for scalp baldness was originally developed in the 1950’s with mixed results. But over the years the hair transplantation techniques have been perfected to the point that the hair which is transplanted looks completely natural. Historically, women have not been candidates for this procedure because of the way their hair loss is patterned. For men the lose is usually at the top of the scalp which leaves good hair growth in the back of the head to be used as a donor site. Women, on the other hand, tend to have thinning hair problems over their entire scalp which means there is not an area of good hair growth to be used for donation hair follicles. This fact put a stop to using hair implantation to treat female baldness.

A new medical procedure now makes hair implants for women a reality since it allows for the manipulation of body hair to be removed and then inserted into the balding or thinning areas. This hair is not of the exact texture of scalp hair but that does not seem to be a problem when using the hairs as filler around natural hair. Finally, there is starting to be equality of the sexes around hair loss treatments.