Hair Loss in the African American Man
I am 33 years old African American and am very concerned about my hairloss. I am probably between a Type 3 Vertex and Type 4 hair loss pattern. My crown is very thin and my hairline is getting thinner by the day. I tried Propecia for 10 months and did not see any substantial differences. I stopped using Propecia because of the uncertanity of future complications.
My hair on the sides and back are very strong, but I am concerned about how a transplant would look. I have seen some guys that have that pluggy look, which looks bad. Can you give me some advise on what the best step would be.
A man of your age who is still at a Class 3 Vertex or Class 4 pattern, is usually not going to get very bald. In the African American, this is more typically the case, but it would be best to get a complete history of your family to be sure that your ancestors did not have advanced cases of hair loss. My concern would be that Class 4 patterns sometimes do lead to Class 5 or even to a Class 6 pattern. That is why I like trying to prevent progressive hair loss with a DHT blocker like Propecia which will probably stop or slow the progression. Stopping the progression is as important as fixing your problem correctly.
African Americans’ are the best candidates for transplant. The characteristics of very curly hair make the frontal work look awesome and the hair just covers better. It is always a pleasure to show off the results. Here are some examples from our website, newhair.com:
I am a 63 yr old African American woman considering hairtransplants. my question is about patients CD & IQ. What kind of transplants were they? FUT, FUE, etc. And when were they done? Thank you.
Vivian,
Patient CD’s procedure was from 2003, and I believe IQ’s procedure was from about 5-8 years ago (sorry, I don’t recall exactly). Both patients had the strip surgery.
I’m writing to find out if you know where I can get a map of the distribution of curly and straight haired people throughout the world. I know there is quite a bit of variation around the world.