Can Hair Loss Stabilize, or Does All Hair Loss Progress to Complete Baldness in MPB? (From Reddit)

I went to a surgeon for a consultation, and he said the following in an email to me afterwards: “Your Norwood classification is possibly Norwood 3. You may not look like this, but you are showing a similar pattern. Your Norwood classification is not meant to be seen as a progression of hair loss, but rather a genetic predisposition (like the color of your eyes).” Is this true? I thought this entire time that when you start going bald, you always end up going completely bald (at some point). This is an important question to have answered because it will determine if I end up getting transplants or not. Is it actually possible to lose hair up to, say, Norwood 3, and then the hair loss completely stops? Or is this bullshit?  I’m currently 26, and the surgeon said to me that, by the time you are in your late twenties, it is relatively easy to predict what classification you fall under by just using the microscope to identify currently thinning hairs, and that most men who ended up completely bald showed clear signs of hair thinning throughout the head in their late twenties.

Yes, many people with a Class 3 pattern of hair loss will retain a Class 3 pattern of hair loss for their entire life. The original classification system was to define the end stage of hair loss patterns, not necessarily transition stages of hair loss, although some people do get transitions from a Class 3 pattern to a more advanced pattern of hair loss.