With new innovations in surgical and non-surgical hair restoration treatments, there is an increasing number of options to treat a common issue that affects both men and women: hair loss. Hair restoration treatments can combat male pattern baldness, stop or slow down the process of thinning hair, mask a receded hairline or a sparsely covered crown to name a few issues. Although hair follicles are self-regenerating and go through several stages from growth to withering follicles and regrowth, hair loss is complicated and can happen because of many reasons. Hair loss can be temporary or permanent, which may help determine what hair restoration option you end up choosing.
Temporary hair loss can occur because of protein deficiency, chemotherapy, low vitamin levels, thyroid disease, and anemia, and permanent hair loss is often due to common balding (or androgenetic alopecia) or a receding hairline. When comparing surgical and non-surgical options for hair restoration, you should consider downtime, level of pain, permanency, time, and cost, among other factors.
Non-Surgical
Non-surgical options include being mindful of hair products and opting for volumizing shampoo and conditioners, products designed especially for fine hair, avoiding intensive products and those with a laundry list of ingredients, and avoiding applying conditioner on the scalp. It also involves ensuring that you don’t have any nutritional deficiencies and considering the medications you take at the moment.
Other solutions include topical solutions that require consistent use like Rogaine (although only 10-14% of people who use it experience hair growth), and pills like Propecia — a pill to treat male pattern hair loss.
Non-surgical options don’t require downtime and there wouldn’t be a need for a long treatment process that may require some larger upfront costs. However, these solutions aren’t permanent and provide limited effectiveness in dealing with hair loss. They don’t often offer the promise of new hair growth, but rather slow or stop thinning hair or mask the appearance of a lack of hair. Scalp micropigmentation is also another great non surgical hair replacement alternative.
Surgical
On the contrary, surgical options may cost more overall and be a much longer process. However, with hair restoration and transplant, you are guaranteed success and a gradual increase in hair growth in the future. As technology and research have advanced in the hair restoration field, minimally-invasive methods that don’t require as much maintenance nor healing time or pain have been developed to provide people with an effective solution to hair loss.
One of these procedures includes the SmartGraft or NeoGraft procedure, a hair restoration technique that uses innovative technology to give natural-looking results. With this type of procedure, a device is used to extract hair follicles from the scalp and transplant them to areas where the hair is thinning or gone. Due to the microscopic size of the extraction, there will be no visible scarring. This method is known as “Follicular Unit Extraction”, an alternative to the traditional strip method where the doctor or physician would typically remove a strip of the patient’s scalp with a scalpel. With little to no discomfort or pain and a track record of wonderful results from patients, SmartGraft/NeoGraft is a reputable solution to hair loss. After treatment, you can expect hair to start growing naturally in those areas. In three months, new hairs start to grow, in six months, you’ll see a noticeable improvement, and in twelve to fourteen months, full growth will occur.
