Category Archives: Hairline

One of my greatest passions in hair restoration is designing recipient sites. These sites dictate the pattern, direction, and density of transplanted and grafted hairs – something I feature throughout this website. At my annual hair transplant course that I direct and have done so now for 9 years, I always incorporate a lecture that […]

When we discussed the bell shaped design of the hairline, we talked about a point known as the “lateral, anterior point”.  This point is relatively aligned with the mid-pupil and it represents where the shape of the hairline goes from convex toward the midline and concave toward the outer portion.  After evaluating a lot of […]

Fronto-temporal Design Options (illustration taken from Dr. Lam's book, Hair Transplant 360) Although we have discussed the bell and the round patterns for hairline design in other blog articles, we did not discuss what the impact is on the temple hair when creating these types of hairline shapes.  When the temple hair is not simultaneously […]

Shoreline model for understanding natural hairlines in hair restoration I really like using the idea of a shoreline to educate my students and my patients on the proper design of a hairline.  A shoreline from a great distance looks relatively straight but the closer you get to the shoreline, the more jagged and imperfect the […]

How to determine the lowest acceptable point for the hairline (from Hair Transplant 360, Lam SM, Jaypee Brothers, 2011) When designing a hairline that are many ways to create one.  In almost all cases, my hair-transplant colleagues and I start with the most fundamentally important point that defines and sets the remainder of the hairline, […]

Hair loss that affects men can be devastating. Hair loss in men who believe that they are truly women can be exponentially worse. They do not have the option of shaving their head and their gender identity can be worsened because of it. By being sensitive to this kind of plight is the first step. […]

I have heard these words many times throughout my hair-transplant consultations, usually leading to the next sentence, “Please make my result as conservative as possible.” That sounds intuitively appealing but it is really not the right answer. I totally understand the issue with one’s fear that a result will be spotted out, especially since hair […]

Hair Transplant Hairline Principles from a Profile View (from Hair Transplant 360, Lam SM, Jaypee Brothers, 2011) When I design a hairline I not only stand in front of the patient, but I go to every angle of the patient to make sure my design work looks good, symmetric, and natural. The side view of […]

One of the most important concepts when designing recipient sites, i.e., the “holes” into which the hair grafts will be placed, is to make very low angled sites, especially near and at the hairline. What I like to call the “picket-fence” look is due to the fact that recipient sites are made almost 90 degrees […]

In the past decade, attending almost every meeting of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS), I have witnessed topics of growing interest. I believe that temple restoration or also known as temporal point restoration has become a very major part of creating aesthetically pleasing and balanced hairline work. As mentioned in previous articles, […]

Although there are many types of hairlines that can be designed, for the sake of simplicity I try to discuss two basic shapes when I lecture to students at my hair-transplant course in St. Louis every year. They are the bell-shape and the round-shape. The bell shape is a narrower design that changes from a […]

Is hair restoration an artistic endeavor? Or in fact is it simply a rudimentary technical procedure in which hair is placed into the head and only the sheer number of grafts count? I will explain in a point-by-point manner why hair restoration is truly artistic in my opinion, focusing on three major elements: macro hairline […]

A sentinel hair is defined as a single-hair graft that stands 1 to 3 mm in front of the hairline. These 1-hair grafts are intended to blur the hairline visually, i.e., to make the line look less like a line. They are the tiny archipelagos/islands that border and float near the hairline that make the […]

There are many types of female hairlines that exist in nature. It is important for every serious hair-transplant surgeon to study these natural variations before considering to undertake a hair-transplant procedure on a woman to ensure that the result is natural and also appealing. Some of the basic tenants of a female hairline is that […]

One of the original ideas that I have been working on is why and how to use a mirror when designing a hairline. What I am always shocked by is that I will look at a patient and draw in a proposed hairline then look at the hairline with the patient in the mirror to […]

The temporal point has become a much-vaulted point of discussion in many of the recent International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS) meetings. When discussing the temporal point, the conversation is reserved here for men, as women typically do not have a pronounced temporal point (but still have one to a lesser effect). A strong […]

One of my passions is female hairline reconstruction. A large reason why is that it is one of the technically most challenging and artistically demanding parts of the head to do and to do right. Unlike a male hairline in which all the hairs angle perfectly straight forward, the female hairline if done correctly goes […]

The vertex transition zone (VTZ), or vertex transition point, can also be thought of as the posterior “hairline” in that it forms the transition from the flat, horizontal midscalp and the vertical plane of the crown. As a reminder, the anterior hairline, or hairline, is formed at the intersection of the forehead and the horizontal […]

I was at a conference two weeks ago in San Diego sitting next to a colleague of mine who deplored how fake hair transplants can be. I said that my results can look utterly natural even at close range and I showed him some of my photographic results. He was impressed. However, I challenged him […]