Snippet from the article:

One of the UK’s leading hair transplant surgeons – Dr Bessam Farjo – has conveyed his concerns surrounding the recent criticism of celebrity hair transplant surgery.

A number of tabloid publications have deemed Wayne’s surgery a ‘failure’ and pictures have been released showing the area where the surgery was performed.

Dr Farjo comments: “What the press are showing is images of the period of rest for the transplanted follicles, which may have broken off or fallen out. What’s important is that the roots stay inside the skin and will be working on brand new hairs that will start to sprout around four months after his surgery. A proper result can take as long as 10-14 months to fully mature.”

Read the rest — Leading hair transplant surgeon warns against media inaccuracies

Dr. Farjo is a contributor to BaldingBlog, but this article caught my attention because what he’s saying is absolutely true. As a population addicted to reality TV and dramas, we are becoming critical of things that we often do not understand. Media inaccuracies regarding hair loss or hair restoration are nothing new, but they’re making tabloid headlines in the UK lately since a number of celebrities have gone public with their surgeries (like this one).

As Dr. Farjo states, transplanted hair needs time to take to root and if you catch it in the various stages of growth, it may look incomplete as one area starts to grow before another. I always tell my patients that they must have patience and wait 6-7 months to see the hair go through its initial growth cycle. By 8 months, the average patient will have hair that is 1-2 inches in length.

I am a little confused by Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant. He only got the procedure done a couple of months ago and already has what appears to be complete growth. Even immediately afterwards it looked as if he had just a shaved head which I didn’t realise would be the case.

For those unfamiliar, we’ve written about soccer star Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant a few times (see here).

I have had some patients that had their transplanted hair grow out very fast. I might see such growth in 2-3 months if every graft grew out immediately, but this is rare. I’m not Mr. Rooney’s surgeon, so I don’t have the benefit of examining his scalp. From the looks of the couple recent photos I’ve seen, styling and hair color have more to do with his new look than full growth does. I am sure he still has a way to go before complete growth is seen. Generally, it’ll take up to a year to see the final results from a hair transplant.

One of my reasonably bald cousins that I did a hair transplant for had full growth of 2 inch long hair in 4 months… so while every patient would like to see the immediate visual impact from the surgery, it’s the lucky few that see such speedy growth.

How common is it for a patient to be lacking in donor hair when needing a transplant? I hear a lot about issues of lack of donor hair and I was wondering if the majority of significantly balded patients actually face this problem.

The great majority of men have a good donor supply (I’d guess in the 99% range). The question that needs answering is — how does the supply balance against the needs for the hair based upon the degree of balding?

In men, under 1% have a condition called diffuse unpatterned alopecia (DUPA) where the donor supply and much of the recipient supply is poor, because of medical and/or genetic conditions. Documenting the presence of DUPA is critically important before a hair transplant is done, or the results will be a failure and the donor area becomes scarred.

Hello,

I have a unique situation, that I can’t quite seem to find an answer for. I have had one major hair transplant, and also a few small touch up procedures all from the same doctor.

I have had to go back a few times due to my right hairline being stubborn for good growth. As of right now, I have just a very small area that I am concerned with, that exposes my scalp somewhat.

My issue is that during my touch up procedures with my doctor, I no longer feel that he has the attention to detail for me to trust going back to him to get this very small area. I’m wanting to find a doctor that would be willing to help me out with a very small procedure without having me pay the minimum fee which could be thousands of dollars.

I understand the reasoning behind a minimum fee, but was wondering if there are any doctors out there that would be willing to squeeze me into their schedule, and not necessarily feel like they need to block out an appointment spot out for me.

Any information or direction that you might have would be great

Thanks

When there are small touch-ups to a procedure we did originally, we often reduce the minimum fee requirement. In your case, we would be doing work created by another doctor, so the reduced fees generally do not apply. That being said, sometimes we will reduce the fee if the work is small, even on someone like you (patient of another doctor).

But… what is a “touch-up,” exactly? I don’t really know anything about your case or what you consider to be small refinements. Questions that need to be considered include: How much of our time will it take? How many staff members do I have to commit to your case? How much time in the operating room does the procedure need? These are important to know and the fees should be made on an individual case-by-case basis once we can establish just what needs to be done.

Touch-ups can be done with follicular unit extraction (FUE), but it still requires anesthesia. All of this is costly to us. We often subsidize our former patients for small touch-ups, as they are generally rare requirements put on us.