Atlanta Hair Transplant doctors

Not every hair loss patient is a good candidate for hair transplant surgery, especially in women where there are many variable causes for hair loss. However, as long as there is an adequate donor region from which to harvest the hair, you could be a candidate for hair transplant surgery. Before surgery, though, it’s important to schedule an appointment with a board certified dermatologist who specializes in hair loss conditions to determine the cause of your hair loss. While your hair loss may be caused by female pattern baldness, it could also be the result of hormonal changes caused by thyroid abnormalities, menopause or birth control pills, physical stress from surgery, illness, anemia, rapid weight loss, emotional stress, and medications. By determining the exact cause of your baldness, your dermatologist can determine if hair transplant surgery is the best treatment option for your case.

During a hair transplant, a strip of skin is taken from the donor region over the ears which extends to the central back of the scalp. Then, if a follicular unit technique is used, the physician surgically separates individual follicular unit grafts from this tissue with the use of a sophisticated binocular microscope. The grafts are then transplanted into tiny custom-sized incisions in bald or thinning areas of the scalp.

The single-haired grafts are used to recreate a frontal hairline, while the two and three, four -haired grafts are placed behind the singles, and so on. Because the hair is kept in its natural follicular units, it grows in the recipient areas in the most natural way possible. These individual follicular units provide a soft, natural look.  During the follicular unit extraction session there is no strip but the individual follicles are extracted one by one.

During a hair transplant, hair is taken from an adequate donor area along the sides and back of the scalp which is not affected by patterned baldness. These follicles are insensitive to DHT (dihydrotestosterone) and will not fall out when you normally go bald. There, the implanted hair should be permanent and last the rest of your life in its new location. In rare cases, if for whatever the reason the donor area thins with age, so will in the same proportion, the hairs that have been transplanted. Patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatment or those who may suffer from a systemic illness may lose implanted hair regardless of its genetic makeup.  This applies to either technique of obtaining the hair follicles, strip vs. follicular unit extraction.