Doctor, I am under 50 and want to get a hair transplant.

You may be a patient with alopecia and you are thinking about a hair transplantand you want to improve your hair.

You are not the only one. I am writing this post because I have received many queries through the transplant form I have on the web about hair grafting. There is one thing in common: female or male patient under 50 years old.

Let's start with a little context. Until 15 years ago, the management of male androgenetic alopecia and common baldness by most hair surgeons was what I believe to be a kick forward strategy that consists of seeing the evolution of a patient in the long term without special medical treatment support and the need to perform periodic hair transplants every five or ten years to try to maintain what is progressively being lost. I do not share this concept at all. In my opinion there are three scenarios for transplanting an androgenetic piece, on the one hand the ideal, which is a stable androgenetic alopecia or one that is improving, and on the other hand an undesirable one, which is unstable energy. Therefore, the first thing you have to consider if you want to transplant if your androgenetic alopecia is stable or has improved in the last 6 to 8 months if this has happened then the door is open for transplantation.

And what happens in those patients who not only do not stabilize but worsen? Well the first thing is to be clear about the cause, yoou might not have androgenetic alopecia but another type of alopecia (areata or cicatricial alopecia) that is causing this. But if you do have androgenetic alopecia and it is becoming unstable, despite medication, in that case you can consider different options.

Based on my extensive professional experience, few cases of patients with androgenetic alopecia treated with the correct medication do not improve. They are usually young males with a high genetic load. Even so, in the case of unstable androgenetic alopecia that does not improve with medication, in that case transplantation is recommended because there are few paths left to "attack" the disease. In fact, this is a point that I take into account when designing the transplant, you can be more conservative or less (low frontal area that looks unnatural over the years).

This situation does not only happen to patients with unstable alopecia, but also to those who do not want to take pharmacological treatment to stop and improve their alopecia. As there are different alternatives for each case, thoroughly evaluated in consultation and always involving the patient in the implications of each one, in many cases I find patients who undergo a hair graft for this reason and since they will not undergo further medical treatment, we can be more "aggressive" with the design of the transplant.

Each case is different and that is why it is necessary to see a professional for a personalized evaluation. Regardless of this, there are always solutions to improve the patient's hair and bring it closer to the patient's vision (as long as this is realistic). You already know that I always make natural designs, avoiding exaggerated and unnatural lines.

Here is an exhaustive explanation of the main points to keep in mind if you want to have a hair transplant.