Baldness : Absence of hair on all or part of the scalp.

Baldness continues to be an ordeal, both aesthetically and psychologically, for women and the majority of men, with the exception of a few unusually happy cases.
These days too many highly ineffectual procedures to replace lost hair are used. At best, they slow down the rate of hair loss, but none of them replaces lost hair with new growth.

There is however an extremely precise and reliable technique to hide the effects of time on a head of hair.
It entails transplanting hair from the same individual to the bald patch, where it will be able to grow as if it had always been there.
This implant technique is elegant, refined and calls for meticulous work. It is a painless, benign operation performed under local anesthesia for discreet lasting results.
We perfectly understand the popularity of this procedure, which has become the most frequent type of cosmetic surgery performed on men around the world.
Hair transplants are not just designed for men with advanced baldness.
They are the method of preference for you at the first signs of hair loss.

The origin of hair loss and baldness is embryonic

During embryonic development, the skin of the scalp is formed from two different buds. The first one comes from the face and migrates to the front and the top of the head. The second one comes from the neck up and will form the posterior scalp area.

The genetic nature of the hair in these buds is different.
Some are sensitive to male hormones. Others, and this is usually a more frequent occurrence in men, tend to fall out prematurely.

Contrary to what people think it is not the nature of one’s scalp (a lack of oxygen, too fat, less flexible…), nor a hormonal upset, nor a deficiency of minerals or vitamins that can explain hair loss. The cause is simply a hypersensitivity to male hormones, which are often at a normal level.

The first consequences are miniaturization and the loss of color of part of the subject’s hair.
The miniaturized hair will then disappear, and the average number of hairs per follicle will decrease.

Hairs grow by cycles which last between 3 and 5 years.
Each hair is programmed for about thirty cycles, which, theoretically, should protect us from baldness for a period of 90 to 150 years.
Everyday, we lose approximately a hundred hairs which are at the end of their lifecycle.

These lost hairs are replaced by new growing hairs.
In sensitive subjects, the growth cycle will gradually become shorter and last only a few months.

As a result :
1 : the hair does not have time to grow normally during a sufficiently long period. The hair dies early and falls out while it is still thin and has less pigment.
This phenomenon is called “miniaturization".
2 : hairs run through the number of cycles at their disposal more rapidly.

It is easy to observe this double phenomenon when we take a closer look at a bald area.
The number of miniaturized hairs is important and, what’s more, these hairs have lost their pigmentation.
The average number of hairs per follicles decreases and we will see a lot of isolated hairs.
The impression of density drops drastically.

Nowadays, we are almost sure that genetic baldness is handed down via the paternal or maternal side of the family.

In men and women, hereditary baldness is not easy to determine because it is linked to several genes. Baldness can even skip a generation.
Moreover, siblings often find themselves in different stages of baldness.

In 90% of men and 75% of women, the cause of baldness is hereditary.
Unfortunately it is impossible to predict precisely how a particular person will go bald and over what period of time. Surgeons can only discuss baldness in terms of the risk of going bald and the percentage, without providing any certainty of the degree of baldness that will be achieved as well the timeframe.

The great history of hair transplants begins in 1832.
At the time Carl Unger encouraged one of his students to investigate hair transplants.

Other transplant experiences followed. During the first part of the 20th century surgeons achieved major successes without leading to therapeutic treatments of baldness.
In 1952, Dr Orentreich, following a request from a patient, performed the first real hair transplant in the context of androgenic alopecia.

A team of doctors, which gained quite a reputation for this practice, studied the procedure with Dr Orentreich and decided to share the technique with their peers.

Technological progress was slow. The results of the first period are presently judged to be mediocre and very artificial. Interventions were justly qualified as baby doll heads, with hair distribution resembling that on a doll head or a field of leeks.

Gradually techniques were fine-tuned to arrive at the follicular transplant.