Diagnosing Hair Loss

[Rese]

Hi everyone,

It’s me again – found an interesting article online about hair loss diagnosis/tests and wanted to share.

There are a variety of options to diagnose male pattern baldness (or other types of hair loss), including

• Pull Test:
  • Assesses severity of hair shedding
  • Gentle traction on 40–60 hairs in three separate scalp areas
  • Microscopic examination and counting of extracted hairs
  • Normal/negative pull test: Three or fewer hairs extracted
  • Positive pull test: Six or more hairs extracted from a single area
  • Microscopic analysis includes identification of telogen or anagen phase and checking for anomalies:
    • Telogen roots: Club-shaped bulb, absence of inner root sheath, common in various hair disorders
    • Anagen roots: Darkly pigmented, triangular or delta-shaped
• Wash Test:
  • Valuable tool where the patient collects hairs shed during standardized shampooing
  • One study found: Counting shed hairs divided into groups (5 cm or longer, 3–5 cm, 3 cm or shorter)
  • Classification of male pattern baldness if at least 10% of shed hairs are telogen vellus hairs (short, pale and thin telogen-phase hairs)
  • Advantages: Modified wash test evaluates the entire scalp
• Other options
  • Other diagnosis options include invasive options (such as scalp biopsies) and other non-invasive options (such as trichoscopy).

Dropping the article details in case anyone wants to research further:

Katherine A Gordon & Antonella Tosti (2011) Alopecia: evaluation and treatment, Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology, 4:, 101-106, DOI: 10.2147/CCID.S10182