• Welcome to Hair loss Experiences hair loss forum.

    Free impartial hair loss advice, hair transplant advice, hair loss medications and hair loss news.
    You can contact us directly at [email protected] if you experience any problems.

Use of Body Hair in transplantation.

sl

sl

BHR Clinic Patient Advisor
With hair restoration techniques improving along with top doctors pushing research and development, surgeons are thinking to challenge the conventional donor area and look to widen the extraction zone to the body. BH or body hair has been used for some time with mixed results and should be approached with caution even now, but Dr. Christian Bisanga has found that the richest supply in terms of sustainable quality of yield has been the upper chest and beard hair. Speculation can be that it is closer to the traditional scalp donor so retains more characteristics, stronger follicular units with better calibre hair and more multiple hair units possibly.

BH potentially opens up the donor supply and this can be of a real benefit to repair patients whose scalp donor is very limited and potentially those with a high Norwood scale hair loss looking to achieve better coverage than their scalp donor can give. One of the challenges is the extraction technique to use, FUE, Follicular Unit Extraction, the use of a small micro surgical punch is implemented to extract each follicular group, the direction and angles of the BH can be very different to that of the scalp and this is an important factor in the survival and long term yield. Direction is especially difficult on the beard hair as the angles can change with almost every extraction so a very good and experienced understanding is required. Dr.Bisanga recommends that BH extraction is not undertaken unless a high degree of understanding is already known from the doctor about the much simpler scalp FUE. Scarring can be a significant issue, especially on potentially naked and very visible areas of the body like chest and beard/face, so the extraction tool size and technique is vital in not leaving visible signs or scarring.

There are a number of interesting points to BH, DHT blockers can effect the growth in actually the opposite way to scalp donor hair. When using DHT blockers some men find their body hair quality and quantity decreases as the lack of DHT to body hair reduces the quality of the re-growth. It is not advisable to undergo a BH procedure if you are either on DHT blockers and suffer from this change or if you will potentially use DHT blockers in the future.

Another interesting case Dr. Christian Bisanga has noticed that long term growth, especially beard hair transplant starts to take on the characteristics of the scalp hair in the area of placement. Beard hair is generally thicker than most scalp hair and when initially placed can appear coarse and thicker than any surrounding scalp hair. It has been noted on cases that over time, around 12 months onwards that the beard hair re-growth began to soften in calibre blending much easier with surrounding scalp hair, native and or transplanted.

Dr. Bisanga has always had a cautious approach to BH over the last 5 years, and in his opinion rightly so as many procedures seem to fail in their objective, especially when using large amount of graft numbers per procedure. He is now quietly optimistic though about the future of BH for the patient and is happy to utilise BH more and more into his procedures. He remains cautious with his approach and has the patient well being always as priority. He is keeping the size of the procedures small to monitor potential scarring, also to spread the extraction over a wider area to allow for better cosmetic donor healing and in the recipient not dense packing to encourage the best possible yield. Of course the downside is with smaller procedures more are required, but the positive is the hair re-grows with no obviously visible extraction scars and long term little wastage of valuable donor supply.
 
M

Mountain

Valued member
The most impressive results in bht that I've seen are from Woods and Umar.
 
Bigmac

Bigmac

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks Stephen for the informative post,i remember myself not believing in body hair used as a suitable donor supply.How times have changed when a skilled doctor uses it appropriately.

Are there many people who are not suitable for BHT due to them losing it just like MPB as i know of one person who lost nearly all his body hair.

Cheers bm.
 
H

hairtech

member
In my opinion stephenl the beard hair doesn't actually take on the characteristics of actual scalp hair. What happens is that it softens over time because a person is not shaving the beard hair... I believe that beard hair is the best solution for hair outside of the scalp though.

We also have approached BHT very cautiously. The bottom line of body hair is this... and I quote from Dr. Woods... "What you see is what you get." Outside of beard hair, the length, texture, color, etc... is what it will look like on the scalp. We have followed several patients for about 4 years that had good growth from chest hair.

In terms of scarring... I have seen only 1 case that had an unusual scarring on the chest. Usually a micro-punch is used, i.e. 0.8mm which leaves virtually no scarring.

In terms of yield... I have seen several doctors that we very aggressive in trying to transplant NW6 patients that ended up in utter complete failure. And on the flip side I have seen some great cases recently.

Last but not least... BODY HAIR has a very significant different cycle. Where scalp hair remains in the anagen phase (growing cycle) a long time... Body hair doesn't. One of our patients that has had a BHT noticed that his transplant sheds more often than his native hair. In fact it bugs him because his BHT sheds all at once and then it comes back...


;)
 
topccat29

topccat29

29 year HT veteran
Hairtech, I have seen several examples of scarring on the body. The was another example recently on another forum by a poster that had work done by Dr. True. He has large white dotting on his arm. It was my understanding that the doctor was having a hard time with transections and went to a bigger punch. There is also another so called expert repair doctor here in the states that has patients with obvious white dotting on the face from beard extractions. I have spoken to them personally and the doctor told them to expect it. This is totally unacceptable in my opinion

Most of the mega bht sessions I have seen have been complete failures.

It's amazing that one of the most highly skilled doctors in fue is also one of the most ethical. Of course I am referring to Dr. Bisanga.

I have zero scarring on both my chest or face and my hairs are coming in very nicely.
 
sl

sl

BHR Clinic Patient Advisor
Hi Haitech,

Speaking from personal experience my beard hair certainly seems to have changed in calibre and softened since initial transplant. I do shave my head very short to a grade 1 approx twice a week so never really get to have longer hair.





 
H

hairtech

member
Topcat,

btw hello man... How have you been? I am so glad you have had a great experience with Dr. Bisanga. He is definitely ethical and I know his punch use size is the smallest needed for a particular graft. And knowing BHT grafts myself, you don not need a punch larger than a 0.8mm. I do not understand why anyone would opt for a larger punch... and especially over a 1.0mm.

Anyway, I totally agree with the MEGA session BHT cases... most all of them them have been utter complete failures. And the aggressiveness of the physicians that think they can fully transplant a nw6 with bht only really is beyond my own comprehension.

Stephenl,

I am sure your beard hair has changed because you let the beard hairs grow to grade 1. If you shave the beard hairs to a zero consistently they will become more coarse.

IMO beard hair is the best choice for doing BHT... then chest, then chest/abdomen then legs. Beard hair grows longer than any other BHT.

Anyway... good discussions!
 
sl

sl

BHR Clinic Patient Advisor
Sorry BM, missed initially,

Certainly body hair, chest, legs, arms etc results in terms of yield seem a lot more hit and miss, beard hair we have been using seems to take on growth faster and sustains a good yield long term, we have also been using into scar tissue with good effect also, so not having to tap into scalp hair that can be used in cosmetically better areas.

Obviously as time goes by we learn more, punch technique, tool used, handling of the graft etc, and this has helped us so far to understand and get a much more sustainable yield, also limiting the areas the doc feels are really viable to harvest from, like I said upper chest and beard being the better options.

Also, it has to be considered, like any HT if BH is going to be used, and assumed it is viable for the patient, has the person got enough to complete the job, so in some respects no point starting if the BH donor is depleted or scarring may become apparent and only complete say 20% of the goal.
 
H

hairtech

member
Does Christian prefer to do a test session in BHT before beginning a larger session?
 
topccat29

topccat29

29 year HT veteran
Hairtech, everything is going well, thank you. I hope all is well with you.

I am very happy with my progress so far. Of course I have a long road in front of me, but the start has been exceptional.
 
H

hairtech

member
Topcat,

I applaud you bro... You have gone down a long dark road... and now you seem to be happier...

I hope other ghost readers see your story...:::C
 
Last edited:
R

runman

Valued member
I am the king of BH. Maybe i should look into this also.
I am a gorilla lol
 
Bigmac

Bigmac

Administrator
Staff member
Topcat has a very educated approach to his situation and knows what his expectations are.
 
Top