MyWHTC Forum

This 25 year old patient came to WHTC after his hair loss was triggered by chemotherapy. The chemotherapy treatments caused all of his hair to fall out. According to the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, “Fortunately, most of the time hair loss from chemotherapy is temporary. You can expect to regrow a full head of hair six months to a year after you stop treatment, though your hair may temporarily be a different shade or texture….It takes about four to six weeks for your hair to recover from chemotherapy. In general, you can expect about a quarter inch of growth each month…” http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hair-loss/CA00037

Following the successful completion of chemotherapy treatments, this patient did grow his hair back. Unfortunately, it came back as a Norwood Class IV or V, rather than his previous full head of hair. The chemotherapy caused acceleration in his natural hair loss progression.
When the patient contacted our office, he had been on Proscar for a little over one year and had gone 1 ½ years with stabilized hair loss (no loss or gain).

This patient had fine hairs on top and in his donor as well. Although his hair was fine and wispy, it provides decent coverage with what density he had, as seen by wet and dry pictures. By using FIT/FUE, we picked the strongest hairs to build his frontal core to give the impression of fullness. A mature, 7 cm hairline was utilized, rather than aggressive, to frame his face and conserve his donor as his family history indicated possible future loss. Hopefully, the medications can stabilize his loss, but if he needs a touch up surgery in the future, less grafts will be needed to match the current transplanted density. The total graft count came to 2579 grafts.

The patient has added Rogaine and HairCycle products to his hair care regimen to stabilize loss, thicken existing hairs, and to promote the best possible hair and scalp health.
We are very pleased with the natural appearance and density achieved. The patient is happy and told me that even his barber didn't notice he had it done. Congratulations!

Another view, 2,579 FIT/FUE

Here are some pictures of the hair line.  For this patient, we went with a low density hairline design.

Because the patient was young (25), it was decided that a conservative approach was the best for him at this time.

The goal was to restore his look based on his hairstyle.  That means fill in the top.  Because he was combing his hair forward, hairline density was not a major concern.  In order to restore his look with as few grafts as possible, the emphasis is on the density of the top/middle rather than the hairline.  Top density makes the greatest overall impact with this hairstyle.

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You can see from the placement pictures that Dr. Mwamba concentrated the majority of the density where it will give the patient the most visual impact.

(http://www.mywhtc.com/images/UploadFolder/PlacementGuide2.jpg)

Because the patient is 25, we don't know how far his hair loss will advance.  This conservative approach allows him to restore his look with fewer grafts, so it leaves more grafts in the donor in case he needs them in the future.  The patient always has the option to thicken the hairline as he discovers more about how far his hair loss is likely to progress.