Since the advent in North America of popular hair restoration techniques in the first 1950's, the medical technologies through which hair is restored has expanded and grown from an average industry with unpredictable leads to a highly effective and popular treatment for modern day pattern baldness. Today's methods through which hair growth is restored to the human scalp are generally natural looking and minimally invasive, making them much safer with shorter recovery times. Restored hair looks and grows like natural hair, rendering it an extremely visually appealing option for many who may base much of these self-confidence on the physical appearance.
There are numerous methods through which patients today may achieve medical hair restoration. These many methods may be broken down into two primary categories, surgical hair replacement, and laser hair restoration treatment. Surgical hair replacement encompasses a wide selection of options. The oldest way of surgical hair replacement is recognized as hair plugs.
Hair plugs were first employed in the 1950's until approximately the mid 1980's, and early 1990's when follicular transplanting became a reality. As hair plugs are often considered the initial pioneered way of hair transplantation, it can also be stated that due to a lack of knowledge regarding hair growth along with technologies
natural hair restoration that are now available today, results for early hair transplants were often not only unpredictable, but often highly unsightly as well. The outcome often more closely resembled doll's hair rather than natural human hair, and initial recipients'of early hair plugs wound up with unruly and irregular tufts rather than full heads of hair. However, with the advancement of technology, hair transplantation today offers many additional options which end up in much more natural looking hair lines. One of these simple newer types of hair transplantation is recognized as Follicular unit transplantation.
Follicular unit transplantation is today's gold standard of hair transplantation. It involves transplanting 3-4 hair follicles, the same amount that occur in natural groups on the human scalp, into the regions of thinning hair. The procedure is normally accomplished using today's advanced technology to get rid of the follicles via an elliptical excision from the donor site, and separating them into follicular units which are then implanted into the recipient sites.
Additional forms of medical hair restoration include the lateral slit technique, which is often used as a way through which to implant follicular units into the scalp. The lateral slit technique can be known as the Coronal or Perpendicular Grafting technique. It derives it's name on the basis of the angle at that your incision is designed to implant the donor follicles. While other techniques exist through which to perform follicular transplantation, the lateral slit technique is recognized as the most advanced thus far as a result of it's superior degree of control within the eventual growth direction of the implanted hair.
Hair-grafting is another method through which hair may be transplanted from percentage of the scalp to another. When performing hair grafting on a patient, a physician will select and remove a percentage of the scalp with high hair density and graft it onto a recipient site on the patient's scalp that lacks the ability to produce hair. Hair graft sizes are often at the doctor's discretion. Another type of hair grafting is hair mini-micro grafting. Just like the general grafting technique, the mini-micro grafting technique leaves how big the graft to the discretion of the surgeon, however, the procedure allows the donor tissue to be surgically removed utilizing a multi-blade knife through which several thin grafts are then generated. These types of grafts while being larger than the follicular unit, are smaller than typical grafts, though the excess skin is not trimmed away so the wounds created at the donor sites are often bigger than they would be utilizing the follicular unit transplantation technique.
Finally, a not as invasive way of medical hair restoration is Laser Hair Treatment. Since many surgical hair treatments are believed cosmetic, they are therefore not covered under most insurance policies. Laser Hair Treatment could be a cost-effective solution for those who are incapable of afford full surgery. Laser Hair Treatment may also be used in conjunction with the afore mentioned types of surgical treatments as a means through which to encourage blood flow to the newly implanted hair follicles and has been found to be highly effective in doing so. Laser treatment often requires several treatment, and testimonials and reviews of specific clinics is highly recommended before deciding on one in particular.