Surgeons began experimenting with techniques of hair transplantation almost 200 years ago. Much has changed since that time, and here at New Image Hair Clinic, we provide the latest in hair restoration procedures and technologies.
A German medical student named Dieffenbach published the first known paper on hair transplantation in 1822. Working with Dom Unger, a medical professor, he successfully moved hair from one area of the body to another, in both humans and animals. Spurred by this success, Unger predicted that surgery would make baldness relatively rare. The technique failed to catch on, however, and proved ineffective in many situations.
Marketing for hair transplantation in the 19th century focused predominantly on people who lost their hair due to injury, instead of on those with inherited baldness. Toward this end, some early attempts at skin flap transplantation were conducted in the latter part of the century. The first modern hair transplantation surgery technique was developed by Japanese dermatologist Dr. S. Okuda during the 1930s. Dr. Okuda successfully conducted grafts to replace lost hair on the head, eyebrows, and upper lip. While he focused predominantly on burn patients, the same technique proved applicable to inherited hair loss as well. Japanese work in hair transplantation did not make much of an impact outside of that country until after World War II, as the research was published in Japanese and largely inaccessible to those in other nations.
In the late 1950s, American physician Norman Orentreich first described the use of these techniques to treat genetic baldness. He also described factors that influenced whether or not the transplant would be successful. Hair transplantation quickly became popular in the United States, although early procedures sometimes failed to provide completely natural-looking results. Physicians removed plugs of hair follicles from one area and transplanted them into the bald location. Given the size of the plugs, transplanted hair sometimes grew in unnatural patches, leading to hair style restrictions.
In the 1990s, physicians began employing much smaller hair grafts, often consisting of as little as three or four hair follicles per graft. Using binocular microscopes, surgeons are now able to isolate and remove individual hairs and transplant them in a natural-looking manner. As such, hair transplants today often provide results that are indistinguishable from natural hair.