First Six Months After My Transplant Was Textbook, Then It All Thinned Out

Dear Dr. Rassman,

I am beside myself. I have tried everything including minox and proscar to no avail. I held out transplants as my last resort to save my hair. However, after my first transplant, though it seemed it was text book up to six mo., after this, it began to thin back out as if it were my normal scalp hair!My transplants were done by a well known surgeon here in San Diego.

My Doc had no answer. My drmatologest thought it might be inflamation but was not 100% sure. Thinking it was a fluke, I opteted for a second transplant in the same area, and the same thing happened! What is going on? Is there anything I can do?

I did have dermatitis prior, durring, and after the transplants, and was battling some infected teeth, which unbeknownst to me were sending out low level infection to the rest of my body for years.

I am in good health otherwise.

Have you seen this before? Do you have any answers, or can you recommend anyone who could address this situation?

I really do not know where to turn to next.

Thank you for your help.

Firstly, I must restate that BaldingBlog is not intended to establish a medical diagnosis or offer a second medical opinion. Furthermore, I do not have the benefit of seeing you in person. Now with that being said, I can answer this in a general way.

If a hair transplant fails or is associated with hair loss, we can attribute it to two generalized causes:

1. Poor technique and human error (not in your case, because you reported that everything grew out and was good for 6 months).
2. Medical conditions that you acquired or that you did not know of that contributed to the hair loss.

I often stress the importance of measuring the miniaturization of scalp hair for the correct diagnosis and quantifying the degree of miniaturization so that if something like this were to occur, another measurement would be helpful in rebuilding a picture as to what happened to cause the hair loss.

I have had one patient tell me a story like you just told, but I believe that not enough time passed for me to draw conclusions on the matter.