Body Hair Transplant

Q:

Hi Dr.Mohebi,

I am wondering if the chest hair be transfer to the head?

Yours,

Name

A:

Good question and the answer is yes. Some people with limited scalp hair can be good candidates for body hair transplants. This is how it works:

Body hair can be harvested and used for hair transplants in people who have both good course body hair and are severely depleted of scalp donor hair (hair on the sides and back of the head). Body hair should not regularly be used as an alternative to scalp hair for hair transplants. This is because body hair has a short growth cycle in comparison to scalp hair, which makes body hair less desirable than scalp hair for a hair transplant.

Each scalp hair grows between 1 to 6 years and then goes to its resting phase for 4 to 6 weeks in which the hair follicle falls out before the start of another growth cycle. Body hair on the other hand has a different growth cycle, which consists of much shorter growth phase and a longer resting phase. In other words, many body hair follicles that you transplant stay in resting phase most of their lives and only a fraction of them grow and are visible at any given period of time. So you are transplanting hair follicles knowing that not many of them could be seen at any given period of time.

Having said that body hair transplants are OK for people who have no alternative ie. bad donor hair density or quality.