Hair transplantation is an extremely popular form of cosmetic surgery – and for a good reason. Hair is incredibly important to how modern humans see themselves. At the same time, hair loss is a very common occurrence. Hair transplants, initially developed in Japan in the 1930s for burns victims, have evolved a great deal since their conception.
Whilst hair transplants were originally rather false looking and left scars; modern FUE procedures claim to leave no scars at all and deliver a natural spread of hair. This is not always the case. There is such a thing as a bad hair transplant. Many people have learned this to their detriment.
So, to help you choose a surgeon (and to have a little fun), let’s look at some key differences between bad hair transplants and good ones.
Consistency
A good hair transplant surgeon is both a scientist and an artist. Not only do they need to be capable of producing the right results in terms of provoking hair growth, but they need to be able to create a head of hair that looks natural. Getting the right hair transplant results isn’t just a case of adding hair. You need to look like you have grown up with your new hair exactly where it is.
A good surgeon will consult with you long before your surgery and assess the ‘grain’ of your hair – where it grows from and with what consistency.
Scarification
Hair transplants before the days of FUE typically involved the removal of a small area of the scalp. This enabled the surgeon to remove the follicles from the area they removed and transplant them. Unfortunately, this left lateral scaring on the back or top of the head. A good surgeon can cleverly hide the scar under hair or the in among the contours of the head.
Clumping
Clumping used to be the reason why most of us would never consider getting a hair transplant. In early procedures, hair was essentially plugged into the scalp, to provoke natural-looking groupings of hair to grow. This rarely worked perfectly – hair clumped into odd-looking groups, giving a distinct wig like appearance to those people unfortunate enough to undergo such transformations.
This is less of a problem with modern FUE procedures. Hair growth is provoked in many individual places, leading to a relatively even mop. Be aware that some overseas surgeons offering transplants on the cheap will be performing an old-fashioned plugging procedure, and you’ll end up looking like a hedgehog.
Overharvesting
This is one of the most common problems that FUE hair transplant patients can have. An overzealous surgeon can end up removing far too many follicles from the donor area of the patient.
This means that the donor area often ends up going bald itself. The unfortunate Mr Hamid from Greater Manchester was a victim of this surgical mistake when he paid for hair transplant surgery abroad.
A good hair transplant should certainly not make you balder than you were before!