Hair Cycle: Implications for Hair Transplant

Dear friends, in my last blog I discussed about hair cycle.Today I will show you the implications of this knowledge in the field of hair transplantation.

As we know, hairs are in a constant cycle, and individual hair is in a different stage of this cycle at any given point of time. If we assume that a person has 3 year anagen / 4 month telogen cycle he will have 25% hairs each at 0-1 yr anagen, 1-2 yr anagen, 2-3 yr anagen, around 20% hairs in telogen and around 5% in catagen stage. Although, this is oversimplification of the actual hair state, it illustrates the point well. Now, once these hairs (in various phases of hair cycle) are transplanted, it is natural for them to grow out at different points of time. Usually this growth occurs between 4th to 12th month post transplant but, the new hair can come out even beyond the traditional 1 yr mark.

Another implication is rate of hair growth. If the number of transplanted hair has more anagen component and less telogen component, the results will be apparent sooner because anagen hair is a growing hair. This kind of pick and choose is possible for FUE, but not for strip. That is why people see good early results with FUE. During strip a fair amount of telogen hair will be transplanted. Once this hair completes is dormant stage and becomes active again, you will see the growth. So be patient.

Many people who are not properly trained or are not aware of the concept of hair cycle can contribute to hair wastage during transplant. Usually, the technicians who are cutting the graft (in old strip method) will discard a seemingly thin hair because they “thought” it was an insignificant, useless hair. This same hair would have grown into a perfectly healthy hair, given time and nourishment. I think that as a criminal wastage of hair in already depleted scalp.

Also, many a times technicians who do not use magnification can mistake a two hair graft, with one anagen and one telogen, as a single hair graft. If such hairs are used for frontal hair line or temple restoration, an unnatural tufty appearance may occur. FUE circumvents this problem because each graft is harvested by surgeon himself under magnified vision.