Dr. Okuda of Japan was engaged trying to transplant hair to the eyelashes and eyebrows of those who had lost them traumatically. This was before the Second World War. When the war broke out, his finding of hair transplant replacement procedures was censored until twenty years later.
In 1959, Dr. Norman Orentreich started a new field of surgery when he published on the employment of hair transplant replacement surgery. It was during this time that doctors had commenced moving balding-proof hair follicles to the balding areas of patients' heads. They used hair from the perimeter, or back and sides of the head, to achieve this.
The doctors were trying to verify whether hair follicles were balding resistant because of where they were situated on the head or because of something innate in the follicles themselves. This would settle the question of whether hair transplant replacement would work by those techniques.
Following their trials, they got the response: the hair follicles themselves made the difference in the life of the hair and not where they were placed on the scalp. They termed this occurrence Donor Dominance. Hair transplant replacement surgery was on the prospect.
Doctors started doing hair transplant replacement procedures straight away. They started with a technique that was somewhat inconsistent. While they did use their design about moving hair from the sides and back of the head to the balding areas, they did not have agreeable results.
These hair transplant replacement procedures in the 1960s and 1970s used a technique where 15-25 hairs were grafted in a round plug pattern. These plugs were both obvious and unpleasant. They looked quite abnormal; if a person had hair plugs, everyone knew it. They were not only improper, they were also permanent.
Progress was made in hair transplant replacement surgery in the 1980s. Mini-grafts were better, but they still had the appearance of plugs, even though smaller plugs. These were made up of 5-8 hairs each. This size of plugs is still being used by some surgeons even nowadays.
As time has gone by, the graft used by most surgeons has gone down. The hair transplant replacement of grafts between 1-8 hairs is the norm. Up to 800 grafts can be done in one sitting at this time. There is still room for improvement, however, as the results still do not look totally natural as they should.
A new technique of hair transplant replacement that is being used by some doctors today is follicle-unit micro-grafting. In this procedure, grafts are made up of 1-4 hairs and are placed over the balding area. This is the customary number of hairs in follicles on a healthy head of hair. By putting in thousands of these follicular units, surgeons can give the look of natural hair and hairline.
Hair transplant replacement surgery has reached a level where it can produce a result that is practically unnoticeable to most people. Over the course of more than a few decades, it has changed from an experimental procedure to one that is used regularly and effectively.
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