Millions of men around the world deal with the harsh realities of male pattern baldness and receding hairlines. Women, too, might have thinning hair problems. Many factors have an effect on hair loss, such as genetic susceptibility, medications, chemicals, stress, skin diseases, hormonal imbalances, systemic diseases, improper hair care, surgical procedures and inadequate nutrition. For those who suffer from balding/thinning hair, a hair transplant can help bring back what looks like a full or at least a fuller head of hair. So what is hair transplantation in the simplest form? To put it all in simple terms, it is a surgery done in a medical office under local anesthesia. Indeed, it is the only solution for baldness. It is all about extracting hair follicles from the back of the head and implanting those hair into the bald/thinning areas. The area we transplant the hair into is called ‘recipient area’. It consists of the frontal region – temples, mid-scalp and crown, that is the top area. The area that is used for the extraction, for harvesting the hair from the back side of the scalp and sides is called donor zone. Since hair follicles at the back and sides are genetically resistant to balding, hair is harvested from the back and sides. Men never lose hair from the back and sides unless they have some special kind of disease. Mostly hair stays on those areas till the end of life. There is another term used in hair transplantation which is very important: it is called graft. Grafts and hair follicles are not the same thing. A graft consists of single or multiple hair follicles. As you know, hair naturally grows in groupings of 1 to 4 hairs (4 is rarely seen). So grafts are basically single hair follicle, double hair follicle, triple or four hair follicles. What matters in hair transplantation is to be able to extract maximum hair from minimum grafts since graft means scarring whereas hair means coverage.
