I saw a patient earlier this week who had a well known surgeon place hundreds of body hair grafts into a bald area of his scalp about two years ago. This surgeon is one who promotes his body hair transplant procedures quite heavily, particularly on various websites and hair loss forums. No, I won’t name names (do your research and you’ll probably figure it out). There was 100% failure for the body hair to grow. Yes, a complete disaster. As one might expect, this patient was quite angry because he spent $11,000 and had great hope for this procedure, as he was depleted of donor hair from the back of the scalp.

Those looking to use body hair to transplant into their scalps should strongly consider other options if they are available, as this is not the first time something like this has occurred. I’ve read various reports and have heard quite a bit about this level of growth failure before.

Respectfully, the patient has requested that his photos not be published here.

I have heard that you can take hair from you back, yes “Back” and put it on your head for transplants?? Is this true and how does it work?

I have had transplants from the normal donor sites – but have never seen or heard of it from the back. I have a hairy back and would use such if this was viable.

In theory, you can move hairs from the scalp or the back and transplant it to any part of your body. In my opinion, body hair transplantation is not as effective as scalp hair transplant, because the life cycle or the growth phase of body hair is very different from scalp hair. Think about it — you need to get a hair cut every month or so. When is the last time you had a body hair cut? Body hair is finer, so it has less value and its growth phase is not 90+% like scalp hair, but 30-60%, which means that far less of the hair that is transplanted will be visible all of the time. There are doctors who perform body hair transplants and some report moderate success. I personally have not been impressed with the results on most of the ones I have seen, but I have seen one patient with nice results, and as it is an exception to the rule, I want to see more to be converted.

Hi Dr. Rassman, I have couple of questions, first questions is, how much does it cost to have hair transplanted from you head to your chest. 3 inches above my umbilical area and down is very hairy,but above that area is completely hairless, it looks like I been shaving. The other question is, does it hurt. Do you have to make an incision or it is done with needles. Will the hair stay forever in that area and will continue to grow. Please respond ASAP I am really serious about having that done. Thank you

Hair can be transplanted from the head to the chest. We actually do this type of procedure for women that want more pubic hair (usually those who lose their pubic hair with aging). The costs are directly related to the area covered and the number of grafts placed at the site. It would run between 500-1000 grafts to cover the area that you defined. The hair will grow long (like on the scalp), so you may have to cut it. If your hair is coarse, it may not look right, but finer hair should do fine. Pain is minimal (like a typical hair transplant), although it does depend on what you consider painful.

Hello NHI team,
I was wondering if you have heard of another NHI hair transplant clinic in greece and how they can use the same name. They use the choi implanter. Their representative is a man called Malcolm Mendelsohn. Heres their web site www.nhihairclinics.co.uk

I try to refrain from commenting on other clinics unless specifically asked. One can only assume that the NHI name was taken by this man for his clinic, because he wanted to claim some affiliation with us (or give the illusion of such). There is no connection between this clinic and the New Hair Institute. The name has also been copied by others in various parts of the world for hair transplant clinics (from Australia to the UK to even here in the US) with the same nefarious reasons, I suspect.