I have just recently returned from the Asian Association of Hair Restoration Surgery Annual Meeting in Seoul, Korea. It was very well attended with over 250 surgeons attending to find out the latest information about hair loss treatments.
Of particular interest to me were the presentations
regarding the influence of the recipient site on the growth rate of
transplanted hair. The original research was performed in Korea over 10 years
ago and showed the surprising result that, contrary to our earlier belief, the
body site where the transplanted hairs are placed influences and changes the
growth rate of the hairs.
The relevance of this is that hairs in different regions of
the body grow at different rates. Therefore when using scalp hair to
reconstruct eyebrows the transplanted hairs initially grow at the scalp hair
rate which is three times faster than the eyebrow rate. This means that the
transplanted eyebrow hairs have to be trimmed regularly as they grow much
longer and faster.
Over time however, the surrounding eyebrow skin somehow
influences the transplanted hairs and they slow down considerably to more
resemble the growth of normal eyebrow hairs. Even more interestingly, if the
transplanted hairs are then removed from the eyebrow and re-transplanted back
into the scalp, they then begin to speed up their growth rate again! Amazing
stuff.
The other benefit from this research is that it shows that
certain body hairs can successfully be used to replace lost hairs in the scalp.
Over time these body hairs will more closely resemble natural scalp hairs in
appearance and growth rates. Despite this, body hairs should only be used as a
last resort when there are no more usable scalp hairs available as donor hairs.
