Category Archives: Surgical Hair Transplant Terms

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 […]

Central Forelock and Extended Central Forelock in Hair Restoration The central forelock is one of the most important concepts that exist for hair restoration.  If the central forelock, that lies immediately behind the hairline looks empty, the person will remain looking bald.  Every graft that is situated in the central forelock also blocks light from […]

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, […]

Artistically designed hair transplant to create optimal visual hair density The goal of hair restoration is to build up enough hair density that one does not have much see-through effect.  Put another way, rows upon rows of hair grafts must be placed so that each row adds to the visual effect of blocking one’s view […]

Gradual Transitions Shown in Recipient Sites for the Crown When I design recipient sites for hair restoration I am always cognizant that each site must blend naturally to the adjacent sites for several reasons.  First, hair naturally slowly transitions in angle from one area to another.  In a natural untransplanted scalp no hair angles abruptly […]

There is perhaps not a day or maybe week that goes by without my thinking of how to perform more beautiful artwork for the head. Is it all just the same thing? I certainly do not think so. I have worked on constantly refining my thinking of how to create better results. Recipient sites, the […]

One thing that I have been fascinated about and has been a technique that I have favored is the use of micropunch instruments. Rather than using a needle or chisel blade, I oftentimes prefer a very tiny punch instrument in which I can remove between 0.5 to 1 mm in size of bald tissue into […]

Every year and every day I am seeking to attain better hair transplant results and the way to accomplish that task is to enlist better instruments, techniques, and ancillary measures. One small but prominent addition to my practice over the past year has been the use of the Cole tumescent gun that allows me to […]

Throughout these blog articles, I have emphasized the need to respect natural hair angles and directions when performing a hair-transplant procedure for optimal naturalness in the result as well as for superlative visual hair density. However, I have not globally discussed all of the hair angles and directions required for the entire head. As a […]

In an ideal world, even the baldest man could have a fulfilling hair transplant and have his entire head covered with hair again. Obviously, this is realistically not always the case. It is a question of supply and demand: supply being how much usable donor hair there is to transplant the area and demand being […]

The goal of hair restoration is to build up enough hair density that one does not have much see-through effect. Put another way, rows upon rows of hair grafts must be placed so that each row adds to the visual effect of blocking one’s view of the bald scalp behind it. This brief article will […]

The central forelock is one of the most important concepts that exist for hair restoration. If the central forelock, that lies immediately behind the hairline looks empty, the person will remain looking bald. Every graft that is situated in the central forelock also blocks light from the front and the two 45-degree side angles as […]

Many times hairs are just moved from the back of the head to the front of the head based on the number of hairs that are bundled in each follicular unit. For example, 1-hair grafts are placed into the front hairline and 2-hair grafts behind that and so on. However, little is paid to the […]

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, […]

One of the biggest topics that has fascinated hair-transplant surgeons, at least as presented at the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS), is temporal point transplantation. The temporal point is the hair point that emanates forward from the temple that can be reconstructed to frame the face from the side as part of an […]

The principle of modern hair restoration is predicated on “donor dominance.” Donor dominance refers to the concept that hair transplanted from the donor area (back of the head) and placed into the front (recipient area) will never be lost despite ongoing hair loss due to the fact that the transplanted donor hair retains its native […]

A graft must fit a recipient site like a hand fits a glove perfectly. Too tight and the graft becomes pinched inward leading to either hair death or a tufted fake appearance. Too loose or too deep and the hair can fall inward into the site and cause unnatural pitting. Too short a site will […]

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 […]

When I strategize to rebuild the head with transplanted grafts, I think globally and I think specifically. Thinking globally refers to how I distribute my grafts over a wide area of balding scalp based on priority. Thinking specifically means how do I think about smaller regions of the scalp for hair restoration. This blog article […]

What the consumer oftentimes fails to understand is that a well-trained and dedicated hair transplant assistant is a vital component to achieving excellent cosmetic outcomes in a hair-transplant procedure. Many times a consumer looks at the reputation of the surgeon or a brand name outfit for reasons to select that entity to do the hair […]

Over the past 8 years, I have explored and now ultimately embraced the beauty of the punch instrument when dealing with bald scalp. The punch instrument is tiny, encompassing 0.75 mm, 1 mm, and 1.25 mm, and do not at all look like the old 4 mm punch instruments that were used during the old […]

I believe one of the major contributions that my clinic has given to the scientific literature is a focus on the importance of hair curl, which is covered in the second volume of my book, Hair Transplant 360. The hair curl describes how every hair shaft, no matter how straight or curly, has a slight […]

Hair Angles and Directions for Good Hair Transplant Results Throughout these blog articles, I have emphasized the need to respect natural hair angles and directions when performing a hair-transplant procedure for optimal naturalness in the result as well as for superlative visual hair density.  However, I have not globally discussed all of the hair angles […]

In the past two years I have made a small but significant modification to my hair transplant work that I would like to share with my prospective and established patients. The concept is convergence and how to place grafts especially toward the midline of the head in such a way as to achieve even greater […]

There has been a controversy over the past few years regarding the best method to make a recipient site. There are basically two ways to make recipient sites parallel (also known as sagittal) and perpendicular (also known as lateral slits, or coronal). A recipient site, as a reminder, is the “hole”, or slit, that is […]

To conclude this blog article series on crown hair restoration, we leave the most complicated part to the end. This article combines much of the knowledge that has been presented in the first four parts of this article series into a composite whole so some prerequisite knowledge is assumed. This article will focus on how […]

To continue our series on crown restoration, this article will focus on creating the right angles and transitions during the procedure. When viewed from a profile, a patient without hair in the crown looks bald because there is a relative flattening of the crown. To restore the round appearance of the crown it is important […]

This brief article will discuss the regions of the crown and why they are important when designing a crown for hair transplantation. The crown can be divided into three geographic zones that run like bands across the scalp: the vertex transition zone, or vertex transition point; the upper arc; and the lower arc. The vertex […]

For the sake of completeness, it is worth starting our discussion of crown restoration by understanding the types of hair loss that occur in the crown as well as the types of hair growth patterns as well. Finally, we will discuss the principle of the “billboard effect” which is to say why crown transplants may […]

Hair transplant into the crown is one of the most complicated areas to understand for both patients and for beginning surgeons. In order to comprehend the benefits and limitations of crown hair transplant in a comprehensive and clear manner, it is better to split this into a 5-part series, with each article focused on one […]

Throughout many of these articles on hair restoration, I am trying to open up to you the reader the technical terms that I use in my day-to-day discussions and thoughts. This article will focus on one particular region of the scalp, the lateral crease. The lateral crease may be more colloquially defined as the line […]

We too often focus on the results of hair restoration, i.e., how the transplanted hairs look, and forget the importance of the donor area. I like to call this the “bank” since withdrawals are made from this area and it is important to preserve the “funds” here for future withdrawals. However, too often, the donor […]

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 […]

Over the past few years, there has been ever increasing popularity of harvesting hair without an incision on the back of the head. This technique is known as Follicular Unit Excision, or FUE for short. It also has been called by other abbreviations, FOX, FIT, etc., all meaning the same thing. Although this method has […]