I have been asked the question posed in the title of the post many times, and each and every time I answered it on this site, I was emphatic that this could not be done because of the problems that we see in kidneys, livers, and hearts when they are transplanted (i.e. they get rejected by the body). Now, the possibility that this may not be the case was raised by Dr. Sharon Keene after she read this article in the LA Times about a small pilot study which may lead to the elimination of taking anti-rejection medication for life following organ transplants — Study suggests breakthrough in organ transplants.

Japanese doctors tried homografts and allografts of scalp hair back in 1928 and again in 1938. They left detailed descriptions of the results. The growth rate was zero percent; however, we have learned much about transplanting organs since then and maybe we can apply what we learned to allow for a better outcome.

Of course, I am not saying that my answer has changed, but who knows for sure what could happen. Successful transplants have been done between different people, in baby hearts under a year of age and in face transplants where the anti-rejection medications can be far less and possibly stopped, but the experience is still very sketchy, as not many face transplants have been done to really know what it takes to sustain such a transplant without anti-rejection drugs.

There are also ethical considerations and medical-legal ones imposed on doctors who think that they could experiment on people without legal ramifications. When I was in medical school our most famous surgeon was Dr. David Hume, who made his reputation in Boston at the Brigham hospital doing a kidney transplant from one twin to another in the wee hours of the night without the permission or knowledge of the medical staff. It worked and he became a hero, but had it not worked, he would have become vilified and this act could have ended his career. With stem cell progress and some of the tricks outlined below, who knows what the future holds; however, I have long believed that the really important problems we, as doctors, will be allowed to treat, will not initially be for the vanity of perfectly healthy men who are balding.

Hey good sir I hope your day and your new year are treating you well. I recently read on your blog that you were in Antartica. Just out of curiosity how was your trip? Would you recommend visiting there? I am just curious because I never hear of anyone going down to Antarctica electively.

Also I had a hair related question. Instead of trying to create completely new hairs from an existing scalp hair, why dont researchers work on manipulating the growth cycles of body hair and other sources of donor hair extraneous from scalp hair? I understand that this hair maybe contextually different but would it not offer the patient some sort of cosmetic value?

My trip to Antarctica was interesting, to say the least. Lots of penguins of all sizes and colors, a few seals and whales, and some very nice scenery. There were long periods at sea, so I sat down with a good set of books on my Kindle and filled the days well.

As for body hair transplantation, some doctors have been doing hair transplants to the scalp using body hair and the results are less than ideal. Leg hair, for example, has a 60% telogen cycle… which means that these hairs stay “sleeping” most of the time. While they are sleeping, they are not visible above the skin. To the point of your question — I don’t know who, if any, research groups are working on changing the hair cycle in body hair.

Snippet from the article:

A new report highlights a novel way for doctors to replace thinning hairlines: transplanting leg hair.

The report, a study of two cases published in The Archives of Dermatology, describes a new procedure in which receding hairlines were restored by taking hair follicles from patients’ legs and grafting them to the head. Men’s leg hair had successfully been transplanted before to the back of the head, but these are believed to be the first documented cases of leg hair being used to restore the hairline.

Read the rest at the NY Times — A New Approach to Treating Hair Loss

The article is about Dr. Sanusi Umar’s amazing work as a pioneer in body hair transplants (BHT). He has privately reported procedures of 10,000 grafts in one sitting using body hair. These procedures are done through very long sessions at times, reported to run in the wee hours of the morning.

Body hair is not the same quality of head hair for use in hair transplants, so I don’t think that this technique will catch on. Although body hair seems to change and grow longer when placed into the head, its value is not equal to donor hair taken from the back and sides of the scalp.

Is it possible to treat a Norwood 7 (not a head full of hair but a decent result) using Hair Transplant + Body Hair Transplant?

Thank you!

At NHI, we do not recommend body hair transplants (BHT), as the results are highly variable and unpredictable.

We do have patients in our Photo Galleries that were Norwood 7 and had great hair transplant results from using scalp hair, but I must point out to the readers curious about hair restoration that every patient is different and the fullness will never be over the entire scalp. It’s about creating the illusion of a full head of hair by using the available donor hair efficiently. You just need to have a clear understanding of what “decent” result you are expecting.