If I Had Minimal Yield from FUE Procedures, Do I Have Alopecia Areata?

In the post linked — Hair Cloning and Hair Transplant Failures — you discuss “transplant failure”. Does this mean total failure or just poor yield? I am a male, late twenties that has been mapped for miniaturization and found to have Diffuse Patterned Alopecia.

Would minimal yield from two (2) FUE surgeries suggest to you that the patient is in fact actually suffering from diffuse alopecia areata? Or do you believe FUE is unpredictable? I realize you cannot make a personal diagnosis over the Internet, but I would like your initial thoughts to point me in the right direction because I am running out of donor hair and patience with two failed doctors.

You’re right in that I cannot make a personal diagnosis over the Internet. You report Diffuse Patterned Alopecia which does not define what you have. I am assuming that you do not have the diffuse form of alopecia areata which is an autoimmune disease (very rare in young men) and if you had it, it would certainly kill off hair transplants if they were done. To make a diagnosis of alopecia areata, you would need several skin biopsies and an expert dermatopathologist to read the tissue when it was prepared. Have you gone through this? If not, this might be your next step before jumping to the conclusion that you had FUE failure for technical reasons.

I would love to see your results with a good photo or two, a set of slides from biopsies of your skin and then I can give you an opinion. What I meant in that post you referenced is a total or partial failure. Failures with FUE are often partial failures, where so many of the grafts were transected (having many amputated hairs) that the yield will be less than what has been transplanted.

In regard to follicular unit extraction (FUE), in my opinion, it is a procedure that is quite variable in the hands of doctors with different skill sets. Most of the failures with FUE, are probably related to the skill of the surgeon. I couldn’t tell you if you’re experiencing alopecia areata just based on the failure of FUE by your doctor. I recently wrote a new FUE guide that I hope you’ll read — Introduction to Follicular Unit Extraction Techniques.