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The History of Hair Transplant

By: Erin McMaster

The History of Hair Transplant

Hair transplant procedures have come a long way over the past few decades. The results surgeons can get with the new areas of hair on a patient's previously thinning areas are far superior to anything they have ever achieved before.

It is amazing that this first came about because a doctor who wanted to transplant hair to give people new eyebrows decided to experiment with a hair transplant on the scalp. Dr. Okuda of Japan was busy trying to transplant hair to the eyelashes and eyebrows of people who had lost them under traumatic circumstances. This was before World War II. When the war broke out, work with hair transplant procedures was put on hold for a further two decades.

In 1959, Dr. Norman Orentreich began a new field of surgery. It was during this decade that doctors had begun attempts to move balding-proof hair follicles to the thinning areas of their patients' heads. They used hair from the fringe, back or sides of the head to accomplish this.

The doctors were trying to determine whether hair follicles were thinning resistant because of where they were located on the head or because of something in the follicles themselves. This would help decide whether hair transplant would work by those techniques.

After their trials, they got the answer: the hair follicles themselves were what made the difference in the life of the hair and not where they were inserted on the scalp. They termed this phenomenon Donor Dominance.

Doctors started doing hair transplant procedures immediately. They began with a method that we can see in hindsight was rather flawed. While they did use their idea about moving hair from the sides and back of the head to the balding areas, they did not achieve the pleasing results they were after.

These hair transplant procedures in the 1960s and 1970s used a method where 15-25 hairs were grafted in a round plug pattern around the scalp. These plugs were both conspicuous and unattractive. They looked quite unnatural - not only were they unbecoming, they were also permanent.

Many improvements were made in hair transplant surgery in the 1980s. It was discovered that mini-grafts were better, but they still had the appearance of plugs, albeit smaller plugs.

As time went by this method became less popular and hair transplant of grafts between 1-8 hairs became the norm.

Today most leading hair restoration surgeons perform a procedure called ultra refined follicular unit hair transplant. This method uses extremely tiny incisions that enable them to safely "dense pack" tiny grafts. This ultra refined follicular unit procedure ensures patients achieve cosmetic density in a given area after just one surgical session. By inserting thousands of these follicular units, surgeons can give the appearance of natural hair and hairline.

Hair transplant surgery has reached a level where it can produce a result that is practically undetectable to most people. Over the course of several decades, it has changed from an experimental procedure to one that is used frequently with great success.

Erin Brough writes on many different subjects in an effort to bring you interesting articles. If you would like to know more about hair transplants you should take a look at www.haircarehere.com to see what products and services are available.

Article Source: http://thearticleshopper.biz

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