18 Years old should I need hair transplant? (photo)

Hair transplantation is the use of a limited
number of genetic resistant hairs to strategically fill areas in the scalp
where there is hair loss. Unfortunately, it is generally ill-advised for
someone as young as you who has such an aggressive hair loss pattern. When you
are losing hair rapidly, most ethical hair transplant doctors would not perform
a hair transplant. However, some doctors would do a series of aggressive
transplantations which would not look very natural at your age.



If you were somebody in your 30s, 40s or 50s
then the conversation would be very different because the expectation of the
degree of hair loss allows the surgeon to transplant hair in a way to frame the
face. There is a general rule of decades - in your 20s, 20% has hair loss - that
means 80% of men have good hair that time. Transplantation can’t give you that
full volume that so many of your contemporaries have right now and will have in
their 20s.



The medical options for you to consider are two
drugs: minoxidil and finasteride. Minoxidil is a topical application. In my
clinical experience, minoxidil doesn’t make much of a difference for younger
men like you who are losing hair so quickly. Finasteride is a one mg tablet
that you take once a day. It is based on the understanding that a certain group
of men have male pattern hair loss because of the androgen sensitivity of hair
follicles to dihydrotestosterone or DHT. Finasteride inhibits an enzyme called
5 alpha reductase which converts testosterone to dihydrotestosterone.
Unfortunately, people who are losing hair at this young age tend to not respond
very well with finasteride. In addition, there are concerns about the sexual
side-effects of finasteride so most of our younger patients do not want to take
it.



I suggest a technology that we developed for the
past couple of years called Hair Regeneration. This is based on the
serendipitous discovery of a wound healing material called extracellular matrix
and its remarkable ability to thicken thinning hair. We developed a combination
of extracellular matrix and platelet-rich plasma taken from the patient’s own
blood. The blood is spun down to concentrate the platelets with plasma that
have growth and healing factors. This is different from a transplant- it's a
series of injections that are done one time. What we have observed is a
significant improvement in the regression of thinning. In fact, there is a
reversal of thinning and thickening of thin hairs. The more recently thinning
hairs respond very well and the older thinning hairs respond not as well so
timing is important when doing these injections.



In our clinical experience, this injection has
helped a lot of people. For 3-5 years, we have not any significant trends of
needing to repeat injections. We periodically repeat injections as we developed
our formulation and we have worked in enhancing results that we have already
gotten. I think this is a great opportunity for someone as young as you to at
least to save your existing hair and thicken what you already have. I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best
of luck, and thank you for your question.

Young men with early hair loss before 18 should see a dermatologist to ensure the correct diagnosis is made. Hair transplantation is not typically performed until the early to mid 20s.