Undetectable Hair Transplants

What makes a hair transplant detectable. I know the freaks I see with those awful plugs, but today these are not done anymore so what must I look for when I am told that the transplant is not detectable. 

There are many distinct reasons for detectability of a hair transplant.

(1) The first is clearly the harshness or the delicacy of the grafts that are placed. If they are not placed as God has grown them (natural groups of one, two, three or four hairs each) and they are not graded (singles in the frontal line only to create a transition zone between the forehead and the beginning of a hairline) then the presence of more than a one hair graft in the frontal hairline can be visually detectable as not soft. Natural looking transplants are soft in appearance.

(2) The rest of what makes hair transplant look like transplants are Location, Location and Location. If a hairline is placed too high, then even if they are put in as discussed (in #1 above) the location calls your attention to the obvious look that something is not right. I am sure that even with good distribution, if hairlines are not placed back in the normal position, they will look abnormal. The rest of the ‘Location’ metaphor relates to the distribution of the supply to the demand area. The doctor must recreate a normal looking pattern that is found in nature. It is Ok to be thin but not imbalanced. So the Location issue must be tied to a MASTER PLAN when a hair transplant is planned and implemented. The art here is tied to the experience of the physician group who can mimic what god has created.

Today, the large old plugs are rarely used (except for the few dinosaurs left from the old days still performing them), but there are still doctors using grafts that are not the natural occurring follicular units that god defined. They come in many names, including slot grafts, mugs, minigrafts or even micrografts that end up transplanting skin along with the hair and therefore creating an abnormal skin surface along with a non-natural occurring anatomy. Today’s Standard of Care is the Follicular Unit which naturally contained between 1-4 hairs each.  Still the axiom remains: Let the buyer beware. I say, do your research and be sure that you are going to get what is represented to you. The most abused term in the hair restoration industry is ˜Totally Natural and Undetectable Results’.