What if you get a hair transplant and Finasteride stops working?

[mwolfe]

Hello,

I'm an NW3 vertex. I recently started Finasteride. I'm considering getting a hair transplant next year if the drug is effective. However, from reading posts it seems that for many people Finasteride loses its effectiveness after a number of years. I have a lot of donor hair, but my family has a history of NW6, NW7 baldness. Would it be a bad idea for me to consider a hair transplant if even if I stayed on Finasteride the hair around the transplanted grafts would eventually bald? Are other people with transplants worried about this possibility?

Thank you for any advice or insight!

[allTheGoodNamesAreTaken]

If it stops working then you can get more grafts until the donor runs out. But I wonder how bad it is to run out of grafts because, do you really give a **** about the vertexthat much? The hairline is what really affects how you look.

[mwolfe]

My back and front are going. The donor supply is eventually going to run out though. I'm surprised more people haven't considered this. Finasteride isn't going to work forever. It could be that in a few decades everyone who got a hair transplant is going to have uneven hair because of continued recession because of Fin losing effectiveness. Not too much a huge donor scar or dots in the back of their head.

[mwolfe]

* not to mention

[mwolfe]

I am shocked nobody has a legitimate answer to this question. This makes me think hair transplants are just a temporary trade-off.

Sure you can get your hair back for 5 maybe 10 years if you're lucky, but it will cost you $5-20k and after that Cinderella period you're going to have to deal with the pain of balding again, just this time it will be worse because you'll be out the money, out the donor grafts, and have to deal with the scars/marks on the back of your head for the rest of your life.

[JoeTillman]

Hi Mwolfe,

Finasteride doesn't just "stop working". If it appears to be working at stopping your loss it may not have completely stopped and instead is reduced to a slow creep. This means that it would take several years to notice any progression of your hair loss as opposed to seeing it sooner in two or three years. Other cases will see the loss not only stop but even reverse to a degree, some minor some major. The takeaway however is that you cannot ever lose sight of the fact that once you have surgery you might need more surgery in the future. It may take three years, it may take ten years, but the chance will always be there for any number of reasons. It may be due to continued loss or it may be due to hair greed. It is unpredictable. However, if you have a good transplant that looks natural, and proper planning was considered when the work was done, you stand a good chance of still retaining a natural appearance even if you do lose more hair and opt to not have more work. The "need" is completely relative to what you feel looks natural and what your end goals are, but you should never EVER expect that one surgery will absolutely be the only one you ever need. No one can predict this and no one should try to either.

[mwolfe]

Hey Mr. Tillman,

I love your videos!

From what I've read, Finasteride loses effectiveness for a lot of people after 5 years (some longer). If you have a hair transplant and Finasteride stops being effective after that 5 year mark, wouldn't that set you on a path to have uneven hair? Even if you have multiple surgeries, eventually the donor hair will run out. I'd imagine that the majority of a person's hair then would be concentrated at the front (and maybe crown) where it was transplanted, which isn't a natural look at all.

[mwolfe]

Then a lot of people with hair transplants could end up looking like this guy: