Medical Advances in Hair Transplantation
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Alopecia (baldness) – is hair loss in certain body or head areas. 65% to 75% of European males deal with this problem. Females sometimes can also have troubles with hair loss. You can lose your hair due to plenty of reasons. Regardless of the causes, baldness is a rather unpleasant process that worsens the appearance of a person. Luckily, there is a good few ways to solve the issue.
Content
- What makes your hair to fall out?
- How can you prevent baldness?
- Medication therapy
- Hair transplantation
What makes your hair to fall out?
The answer to its question is still unclear. Baldness is a pretty tough process occurring when the functioning of various organs and systems is disturbed.
However, predisposing factors causing hair loss are still there:
- High level of androgens
- Genetic predisposition
- Seborrhea
- Acne
- Hyperproduction of sebum
Causes of female hair loss are:
- Hirsutism (tendrils on the face, acne and other phenomena of masculinization)
- Taking progesterone-dominant contraceptives
- Menopause
- Estrogen deficiency
Direct causes of baldness are:
- Head traumas of hairy part of the head
- Severe thermal or chemical burns of a hairy part
- Taking drugs for cancer chemotherapy
- Radiation
Race is also an important factor. Representatives of the European race are more inclined to baldness. Moreover, alopecia is rare in Mongoloids and representatives of the African race almost never experience this issue.
How can you prevent baldness?
Lots of people struggling with baldness think if it’s possible to stop the process. Thus, you can slow the further hair loss at the early stages of alopecia with the help of medicines. Let’s talk about this way of treatment.
You can also apply special shampoos and lotions aimed at the strengthening of hair follicles. Such aids you can easily buy at the pharmacies. They can contain anti-androgens and substances that dilate the vessels and stimulate local blood flow.
Non-drug treatment and prevention measures are also used:
- Laser comb
- Wearing a head wear with an internal relief that squeezes the scalp in areas prone to baldness
- Head massage and physiotherapy procedures (effectiveness is not proven)
Medication therapy
Medication therapy means you will be prescribed several sessions of special drugs including hormones. Doctors make the therapy scheme individually for each patient. Drugs are usually combined with application of special creams, massages, physiotherapeutic procedures.
Normally, they indicate anti-androgenic agents. Menareprescribed 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors which are also applied for prostate adenoma cure as its causes are the same (high level of dihydrotestosterone). Women are prescribed cyproterone acetate, though it has an anti-estrogenic effect. Therefore, estrogen is additionally prescribed.
Local anti-androgenic agents are also prescribed in the form of shampoos and lotions. They are supplemented with vasodilators which are substances that dilate the vessels and improve hair follicles trophy. But such treatment is effective in no more than 30% of patients. The only advantage of local means is a high security profile.
Medication therapy helps to strengthen the existing hair follicles while stimulating new hair growth. You are not going to see the immediate effect as it takes several months of treatment. Disadvantage is a resumption of hair loss after therapy is over. Besides, systemic anti-androgenic drugs are not devoid of side effects, especially with long-term admission.
Hair transplantation
This is the most effective way to solve the issue. Transplantation of androgen-resistant (non-susceptible to male sex hormones) hair follicles to the necessary sites underlies the method. There are also several ways to transplant the hair:
Surgery. First, they cut a part of a hairy skin area of donor hair andapply the stitches. Most often, it’s the occipital area. A doctor then performs small incisions in the areas of alopecia, and inserts a transplant there.
Surgery has a number of disadvantages like a scar that looks unaesthetic causing discomfort to the patient. Moreover, it’s still impossible to get the desirable hair density as a new hairline will be rare, even after several surgical procedures would have been carried out.
Non-surgical hair transplantation presupposes obtaining the material with its subsequent transplantation without extensive incisions. Hair follicles are removed by special rotating piercers. When necessary part of hair is ready, a doctor does punctures or small incisions in the area of alopecia, inserting hairs into them. You don’t need any stitches this way, but there are still small scars on the donor zone. The resulting density of hair will be about the same as with the surgery. However, the procedure is not repeated due to a large trauma. Therefore, today these methods are used extremely rarely.
HFE technology (Hair For Ever) is a new method of non-surgical hair transplantation, often used in modern medical institutions. They remove hair follicles from the donor zone without using a scalpel. The material is picked up by special micro-needles. Consequently, there are no scars after manipulation.
Obtained transplant is put onto the required parts with the help of a special implanter with a microneedle. Tissues are almost not harmed and punctures heal within 2-4 days. Hair survival rate when using this technology reaches 97-99%. Procedure can be repeated, achieving the desired density.
Methods of cloning hair follicles or growing them from stem cells are being developed, but not yet applied. It is expected that new treatment techniques will completely solve the problem of biological material shortage for hair transplantation in the nearest future.
Choose treatment abroad and you will for sure get the best results!
Authors:
The article was edited by medical experts, board certified doctors Dr. Vadim Zhiliuk and Dr. Sergey Pashchenko. For the treatment of the conditions referred to in the article, you must consult a doctor; the information in the article is not intended for self-medication!
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