Many of my patients want to get a hair transplant but worry they won’t have enough hair for the procedure. They often ask, “Could we use someone else’s hair instead?”
Hair transplantation follows the same principle as organ transplantation. Our body’s immune system reacts to foreign substances, so when we introduce these into the body, there will be resistance.
When receiving organs from other people, patients must take immunosuppressant medication to prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted organ. This medication has numerous side effects. However, for kidney, liver, or heart transplants, it’s a matter of survival, so taking immunosuppressants is worthwhile.
The same concept applies to hair transplantation. If we use hair cells from other people, the body will resist, and the hair roots won’t survive unless the patient takes immunosuppressant medication. But the purpose of hair transplantation is to enhance one’s appearance and boost confidence—it’s not worth risking the side effects of immunosuppressants for this cosmetic procedure.
The important thing is that the doctor has to be experienced enough to help a patient plan and harvest the right amount of hair grafts for a patient’s procedure so the hair will be used most efficiently and worth the waste
