Hair Transplant in a Woman with Female Hair Loss
I visited a woman today who was suffering from female patterned baldness. She said she heard about the great work we do and she was interested in having a hair transplant procedure done at Parsa Mohebi Hair Restoration. Since her hair thinning pattern was typical of hair loss in women with female patterned baldness (also called female patterned alopecia) I decided to post this article on women’s hair loss and hair transplant to answer some of the questions many women have pertaining to female hair loss. Our hair loss patient was around 50 years old with a history of hair loss for over 6 years with more accelerated hair loss in the last 2 years. This woman has dark hair and white skin. As you can see in the picture, the thinning in the front and top was giving her the appearance of balding in front that she could not hide this with regular styling techniques.
Patients with female pattern baldness usually have significant miniaturization of hair follicles and significant widening of the spacing between hair shafts. Miniaturization occurs when hair follicles start to get smaller and smaller and they look like baby hairs that do not grow past a certain length. This miniaturization and space widening occurs in a large area of skin including their donor area. The donor area is the hair on the sides and back of the head, which remains intact in men with male patterned baldness due to male genetics.
We discussed different medical problems that could cause hair loss in women and the importance of discussing those with her family doctor, internist or endocrinologist. The most common causes of accelerating genetic hair loss in women are:
- Iron deficiency
- Thyroid disorders
- Female hormonal imbalance or the use of OCP‚ the contraceptive pill
- Excess levels of male hormones
- Auto-immune disorder
- Some medications
My recommendations to this patient and other patients with this similar condition are:
- No hair transplant as of yet
- Visit her family doctor with our letter in hand to look for any treatable causes of hair loss
- Rogaine 2% lotion, twice a day
- Visit us in a year to be evaluated with another miniaturization study for the progress of her hair loss or gain
- Coloring hair lighter to decrease the sharp contrast between hair color and skin tone to create the appearance of fullness
- Toppik, which is a topical hair product that can give more body to hair shafts
For more information on women’s hair loss you can visit our website.
