Young Athlete. Short Hair.

[billena]

This 23-year-old athlete desired two things: 1) to add density throughout the frontal half of his scalp, and 2) to be able to continue to wear his hair at a very short length. These images and video show this patient's progress from follicular unit extraction (FUE) at both the 1-week recovery phase and the 7-month early growth stage.

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[ziggs11]

The donor looks good. That looks like pretty aggressive hair loss all over his head though. Is he going to start meds?

 

[drcarloswesley]

This patient has been known to our office for many years. He began taking finasteride about four years ago. In addition, he had been coupling this with topical minoxidil 5% for three years prior to any surgical intervention.

At only 7 months, I encouraged our office to display this montage, not for the recipient growth (which will continue and you will see from all angles once it's grown in fully), but rather to illustrate the planning process in a young man. In our office's peer-reviewed publication that compiled the opinions of 34 of the world's most experienced hair restoration surgeons worldwide with nearly 1000 years of combined experience, there's a limit to the amount of safe donor scalp hair that can be harvested.

The key points that I feel strongly about in this type of patient are:

1. having this young patient really commit to medical treatment and seeing it's benefit before undergoing FUT or FUE;
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2. creating a cosmetic improvement that doesn't draw attention to itself (donor and recipient), but rather gives that patient a healthier look; and
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3. ensuring that the pattern will continue to be age appropriate in his 40s, 50s, etc.
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You can see how low this 23-year-old athlete's existing hairline currently was. Giving in to the temptation to transplant at that level would have resulted in the type of unnatural outcome (see pic below) that I've seen from patients coming in for repairs after having that overly-aggressive hairline treatment performed by other HT clinics at a patient's young age. The transplanted pattern simply doesn't match what nature had intended. It's important for a patient to look great 18 months after the procedure when the transplanted hair has fully grown in. It's equally important for them to look great 18+ years after their session when their pre-existing hair has continued to recede.