need answers

[mrnelson1970]

hello
is it true or false that curly hair is harder on a HT then stright? should i look into a doctor that deals with curly hair HT? does anyone know is there a difference between cury or stright HT?
thanks nelson the bald guy

[Spex]

I honestly don't believe so as the majority of the shaft is shaved down anyway. It certainly gives for great coverage and is a great HT characteristic

All good HT clinics will have a variety of curly hair patients to show you - There are several around on the net also.

All the best

Hair characteristics

Hair characteristics play a vital role in the overall illusion and success of a HT. Some patients have more favourable hair characteristics and therefore need less grafts to gain their personal goal. Someone with fine, straight, thin hair is going to require more grafts to achieve a similar result than for example someone with coarse, wavy, thick hair.

Remember Hair transplantation is the "art of illusion". With the appropriate placement and use of your hairs characteristic the illusion can be achieved very well - the more favourable your hair characteristic is ie; wavy, thick hair means the illusion can occur with fewer grafts if positioned correctly.

Our hairs characteristics all vary but be aware of your own when embarking into HT's and how it can aid or not aid the illusion. In brief - Patients with very similar loss patterns may not have the same hair characteristic. Therefore they will require a different amount of grafts to achieve a similar result in terms of illusion, coverage, density.

Hair transplants are all about the art of illusion ;-)

[Mark Baxa, MD]

Hello ...... I would agree with what was written by 'spex'.
Curly hair can provide great coverage after the transplant and in reference to the actually dissection of the follicles, it can only be deteremined at the time of the procedure, if the follicular shaft will be curly under the skin. But with a good surgery team, this is usually not an issue.
We deal with this all the time.

Best Regards,

Mark D. Baxa, MD

[gillenator]

Here's the deal. It all depends on whether we are talking about strip or FUE. You better believe it makes a huge difference with FUE! With FUE, curly hair can present an entirely different situation during the extraction process. There is more risk in transection with extracting curly hair because the surgeon cannot see into the dermis layer of tissue. Curly hair can protrude at many different angles compared to straight hair.

With strip, the tissue specimen is excised. There are no individual extractions that you have with FUE. And the inner dermis layer is clearly visible to the techs doing the microscopic dissection.

IMHO, a patient with curly hair characteristics would be the HT surgeon's worst nightmare IF he/she is learning the extraction process and new at FUE.

That's why anyone with curly hair considering FUE better do their homework real well and insist on choosing a FUE doc who has lots of experience with curly haired patients AND the proven yields to support it. Don't just take their word for it.

Otherwise you may end up with a doc who will elect to use punches with 1mm plus sizes and then you could end up with visible scarring from those monstrous sized punches.

[Mark Baxa, MD]

The comments post by 'Gillenator' are pretty much on the money. I would never attempt the FUE method on patients with curly hair for that exact reason .... The yield of viable follicles is definitely to low.

I could not have written it better .... Then the comments posted by Gillenator'.

Best Regards,

Mark D. Baxa, MD