Hair restoration surgeons started using hair plugs in the U.S. around 1950’s to treat balding problems. During that time, they used methods to treat male baldness but hair plugs for women were not available because there is really quite a big difference in how men and women lose their hair. Androgen alopecia is a genetic disease that actually causes most cases of baldness in both males and females.
Although the cause may be the same the results are very different. A man experiencing the genetically transmitted condition androgenic alopecia typically loses hair in the area above the forehead and on the crown of the head. If the loss is at the front it is called a receding hairline, and that is where most men generally begin to see hair loss as the problem progresses.
In fact, most men do not lose hair on the side of the head or back of the scalp, meaning there is still a lot of hair growth here which can be uses as donor hair. These donors are removed from the zone of hair follicles in the scalp, usually at the back where the removal is not detectable, and then implanted into the bald area. When they start to take root the follicles reproduce hair in the places where there was hair loss. Hair plugs for men work very well because they have a donor site from which the hair can be removed without being detected. But women do not go bald in a certain area like men, instead they experience thinning hair over their entire scalp. This means there is no good place to donate the hair follicles from because taking hair from any part of the head will just make it look worse. Hence, the standard process of hair plugs for men is in fact an unworkable treatment for women, no matter how sophisticated it is. A new surgical procedure was needed to make hair plugs for women a reality.
Fortunately, new technology has been developed which is known as follicular unit extraction. This process allows the body hairs to be implanted into the scalp. Even if your body hair is different in composition from the hair on your head, it can still act as fillers to thicken what natural hair is still there. As the hair grows back a woman can hide her hair loss problem and she won’t need to be wearing a wig.
