More Hair Transplants After Depleting the Donor Hair Supply?

This insightful information was posted on our hair restoration forum by Dr. Timothy Carman  of La  Jolla, CA, who is a highly esteemed member of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians.

Has anyone depleted their donor  hair  supply after 2 or 3 hair transplant surgeries? What options are available if you have done this and need further work? Is FUE an option if strip is not?

One of the issues to be addressed in the initial hair restoration consult, and, in my honest opinion, the most critical concept, is the surgical plan created by the physician in conjunction with the patients’ age, degree of hair loss, donor supply, scalp laxity, and genetic background (familial history); all in an effort to “predict” the future hair loss pattern for that individual. Ideally, then, knowing the limitations given the patients “lifetime supply-demand balance”, as I like to call it, the initial plan will be implemented so as not to ever get to such a distressing or “impossible” situation as described above.

This concept can be difficult to communicate, especially to younger patients, who may want a more aggressive (less receded) hairline than they will have supply for in the future.     In   my opinion, the successful hair transplant is just as much about creating the conservative, less “wow” result as it is the obvious large hair transplant megasession out of the ballpark results; probably even more so.  

The long term picture is a very important concept, thought I should just give it some thoughts here.

Sincerely,

Dr. Timothy Carman

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Bill Seemiller
Associate Publisher/Editor

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