Hairline Regrew with Meds

I’m a 27 year old with recession to a NW2 pattern, but thinning over a NW5 area. I’ve been using Propecia, Minoxidil and Spiro for roughly 1 year, and I’m noticing pigmented hair starting to sprout around my original NW1 hairline. However, the density on the top of my head appears to have gotten slightly worse. Maybe it’s a shed, I don’t know.

With success continuing on the hairline regrowth standpoint, do you think the thinning on top is just taking longer to grow in — or could it be possible I’ll end up with a NW1 hairline, but with a thin NW5 pattern? I understand that hairlines usually come back in (if at all) AFTER the crown and vertex have filled in…? It just seems odd to me to be having regrowth success in the one area people have a lot of trouble with, but be lagging behind in the areas that are meant to respond best to treatments.

My father has a NW4 recession/NW6 thinning pattern at 55, and my hair loss seems to be following the same pace and pattern as his did at my age. In the scenario that I don’t achieve desirable density on treatments in the next 12 months, is FUE an option to fill in the density of the thinning pattern? On that same note, if I were to have FUE done in the next 1-2 years, would it still be possible to pursuse Hair Multiplication when it became available? I can’t remember where I read it, but someone mentioned that previous HT patients would not be suitable candidates for HM for some reason. Or maybe I misunderstood/misread…?

Call it vanity or risk, but I’d rather have decent hair in my 20s and 30s, and the confidence that goes with it, and worry about my 40s onward if/when I get to them. What can I do NOW to achieve my goals, even if they’re temporary fixes until the next great drugs/procedures come along?

Thanks

I am very impressed with your questions, particularly the way you distinguish the difference between the way to classify recession and thinning patterns of hair loss. You are correct to assume that the impact of medication is different between the front and the top/back of your head. I do not understand why the treatments you are having are impacting the juvenile hairline (Norwood Class 2 pattern moving to a Norwood Class 1 pattern).

With regard to filling in a thinning pattern — that would depend upon many things. There are many doctors who would gladly sell you hair to fill in a thinning pattern, but there is always the really important question to ask: Will the gain off-set any loss from the transplant? Many unscrupulous doctors would like to tell you that this is preventive hair transplantation to stop the balding. When I hear that statemen (preventive hair transplants) I know that the doctor has ethical problems and $$$ are getting in the way of his/her judgment for good patient care. To get a proper answer to that question, you MUST find an ethical doctor who will answer it from your perspective. Judging that you are focusing upon a Norwood Class 1 pattern, I might think that you are overly worried. If you choose to have an FUE or a conventional strip procedure, that is an independent decision to having a transplant in the first place.

Any transplant you *or any person having them) might have will not interfere with the advances in hair cloning or hair multiplication that may come up in the future. You are worried about what you will look like in 13 years, but I would ask you to have you scalp mapped for miniaturization and if you really are thinning in the patterns you discussed above, then the drug of choice is Propecia/finasteride and that could do more to fix the thinning problem than any hair transplant you can do.