By Christine Haran
It's not hard to spot a man with a bad hair transplant. The transplanted hair looks unnatural, as if it were plugged into the head. What few people realize, however, is that it's likely they've also seen a man or woman with a good hair transplant. The trick is that a good hair transplant is virtually undetectable.
Hair transplantation has changed dramatically over the last decade. "It's almost unfair to call it the same the same thing, it's so different," says Robert Haber, MD, president of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, an educational organization, and an assistant professor of dermatology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Pittsburgh. "There have been huge improvements in every aspect of transplantation."
New techniques
In the transplant procedure, hair is taken from a donor area, usually at the back or sides of the head, and moved to the area where there is hair loss. While donor hair used to be harvested and transplanted in large bunches of 10 to 20 hairs, surgeons now transplant tiny bundles of three or four hairs that grow together in what are called follicular units.
"Surgeons used to use instruments called punches, which looked like cookie cutters, to make circular incisions in the head, and it gave the appearance of a doll's head," says Dr. Ivan Cohen, an associated clinical professor of dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine and a hair transplant surgeon in private practice in Fairfield, Conn.
Copyright 2009 NBC Health
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