FAQ: Hair transplantation for patients with Frontal Fibrosing Alopecia - Hair Restoration Blackrock

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) with Dr Dmitri Wall, Dermatologist at Hair Restoration Blackrock HRBR

Q. Is hair transplantation suitable for patients with Frontal Fibrosing Alopecia?

Video transcript:
Hair transplantation in frontal fibrosing alopecia is a very contentious area. One of the concerns that people have is that if you transplant into an area that's affected, it can sometimes stimulate an increase in activity of the condition. And that you can see this, either the hair won't grow because you're transplanting into an area of scarring, or that the condition w reactivate, and it'll destroy both the transplanted hair and the native hair that's left in the area. So when you undertake a transplantation in frontal fibrosing alopecia, you have to do it with extreme caution. You have to really have a good experience of doing it, so you can honestly explain what the risks are with patients. You have to be able to follow that area, and usually, what we do is you don't do a full transplantation. You do a small area, and you see what the survival of the grass is like in that area. You are typically doing it in the context of other medications that are being used to settle down the frontal fibrosing alopecia. And ideally you would like to make sure that the frontal fibrosing alopecia has been quiet and hasn't progressed in a good period of time. So there's a lot of conditions that you need to meet before you proceed with transplantation. What I will say is that there are a number of people who have gone on to transplantation. Some who've even seen further hair loss, despite that. And many of them don't regret that transplant because it offers them a degree of hope, and it offers them a degree of capacity to camouflage a very obvious area of hair loss.