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

Dear emrenassThanks for the question. There is no age limit as such for a hair transplantation. But people under the age group of 18 years to 80 years usually options for hair transplantation as the symptoms of balding and spot balding occur within this span of life. I wish you all the best.

A doctor needs to examine you first to make sure you are a surgery candidate with good donor hair. The examination may find that you may be at an increased risk of further hair loss and the surgery may actually make the you look WORSE or require more surgery.

You also have to understand that hair transplant surgery is not a cure and that they will continue to have further hair loss of non-transplanted hairs. You need to have realistic goals and understand what is possible and what is not possible with surgery.You also have to understand there are medications as well as concealers for thinning hair.

Hi,I see what you mean, but this is not the right time for you to have surgery on your scalp. You are too young, the hair loss is diffuse and you will regret it; maybe now, but for sure later. See an ISHRS doctor for more advice my friend.Dr John E Frank, MD

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.

You should NOT have a hair transplant.  Your biggest enemy is the
progressive nature of balding that comes about from genetic male patterned hair
loss. What will happen in the next 5 or so years is probably that you will
continue losing hair in the pattern that you inherited from your parents and
grandparents. Your looks show early balding now, but this is the time to meet
with a good doctor who can make the correct diagnosis and start you on the drug
finasteride, which is highly effective at stopping progressive balding and
possibly reversing it in men of your age. Get Bulk Measurements of your hair to
determine where your present balding is now, and then after you go on the
medications, such measurements will tell if the treatment is working within a
year or so. If you are developing a more advanced balding pattern which the
Bulk Measurements will show over a one year time frame, then you and your
doctor need to develop a MASTER PLAN and that Master Plan might have
transplants as an option. With early balding, I would not rush to hair transplants
if the drug alone will solve the problem and you will know this within a year.

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.

It would be best to have an opinion after an in person consultation with an expert in hair restoration surgery. It is likely that you have a strong family tendency for early and extensive male pattern hair loss. If such is the case, medication coukd be considered as much, and perhaps more, as a hair transplant.