Category Archives: Dr. Lam’s Blog

Dr. Lam was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Society of Hair Transplant Surgeons on Monday, April 22, 2024, in Gurugram, India. He was unable to attend the ceremony but here is a transcript of his written acceptance speech. Life and Lessons as a Hair Surgeon I am honored to recount my biography in […]

No matter where you are in your hair care journey, using shampoo and conditioner can keep your hair clean, moisturized, and healthy. But of course, it can get more complicated than that, particularly during hair loss and after hair restoration treatment.  Expert Hair Science and Treatment With Dr. Lam While maintaining the health of your […]

Hair loss affects millions worldwide, leaving many seeking answers and solutions. Genetics often play a significant role in this phenomenon. Hair genome testing can help you learn more about your hair loss and what you can do about it. The Science of Genetic Predispositions for Hair Loss Hair loss, or alopecia, can look different for […]

There have been reports using Botox for hair loss but definitely not in the way that I have discovered, invented, and now have achieved a patent pending status with the U.S. Patent Office as of December 2023. Botox, unfortunately, has been negatively associated with toxicity, paralysis, and other unfavorable outcomes. However, I use a super […]

I know you’ve probably read an article or two in the past few months to years exclaiming the amazing breakthrough of hair cloning in a mouse or some other animal model. In fact, two to three times a year, a friend or patient will ask or send me some news clipping about this fact. Hair […]

We are in an epidemic of problems in the hair industry that I encounter almost every day and it has made me incredibly sad and upset. A huge part of who I am is the desire to combat social injustices, especially human trafficking and child abuse. I see today that we are sliding into an […]

I have seen simply tremendous and uniform results with my innovative hair stem therapy for both men and women who undergo this treatment. I have actually yet to see even a single failure minus one African-American woman who had traction alopecia, which is actually impossible to regrow hair and requires surgery, so I do not […]

Dr. Sam Lam is pleased to report that he has been selected to be a member of the international faculty at the Iranian International Congress of Rhinology and Facial Plastic Surgery, an international conference that is scheduled to be held at the Razi Convention Center in Tehran, Iran during the month of October. The Iranian […]

In a previous video featured on YouTube and on this Web site, I discussed the dangers of performing hair transplants in men who are too young. Age is a relative thing and it depends on how much baldness one has, how fast that hair loss is, what kind of hair quality (density, thickness, color, curliness, […]

I have been asked to co-chair the basics course at the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery this year, which will be the first time doing so. I did teach there last year and gave a lecture on recipient-site anesthesia and tumescence. I have been really excited about actually chairing it this year, which gives […]

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 […]

The “magic sauce” that I talked about in my previous blog involved platelet rich plasma (PRP) and Acell. The question though is whether adding Acell, a porcine bladder matrix, does anything? I know many physicians who only use PRP and think Acell is redundant. Having now done several cases with Acell, I would beg to […]

I just got back from running my course in Atlanta on hair restoration that involved a new hands-on component. I look at it as a mini-St. Louis Course, the main course that I run each year that is a very extensive hands-on course. This is my second year running the Atlanta meeting and I am […]

I try my best to keep up with the latest and greatest in the world of hair restoration. As many of the ladies know Latisse by Allergan Inc., the makers of Botox, has been a runaway success for extending eyelashes and making them thicker and longer. Bimatoprost, the generic name for Latisse, is a prostaglandin […]

I cannot believe that this will be the fifth year that Emina and I will be running our St. Louis Hair Transplant 360 Workshop, which has grown, matured, and evolved. The cornerstone of the workshop has always been excellent didactics and extensive hands-on training using cadaver tissues and models. Emina has come up with some […]

As many of you know Emina and I each wrote texbooks, Hair Transplant 360, volumes 1 and 2, respectively, a few years ago. Attending so many major meetings, I realized that even though our books are still highly relevant I needed a new volume that would reflect the multi-author, international perspective along with featuring the […]

As many of my patients know, I truly believe that prior to October 2011, we were in the Dark Ages of Hair Restoration. Of course, we always performed great work at the Lam Institute for Hair Restoration. However, we did not have the “magic sauce”, a term I affectionately refer to PRP, or platelet rich […]

Pain control is so very important for every patient. I take that concern to an extreme level. As many of you know for my conventional linear harvesting (standard hair transplant) where discomfort can be greater, we have every patient under what is known as Level 2 conscious sedation, meaning patients do not feel anything. If […]

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 thought that my patients would be interested in how I have worked with the ISHRS this year, an organization that I am very proud to be a member of and when my application is approved this Fall, I should be one of the first inductees to be a Fellow status in the organization. Fellowship […]

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 […]

When trying to create a natural result in a hair transplant, there are so many factors to consider in getting a result that looks amazing. One factor that is little talked about is how to transition from one part of the scalp to another, e.g., the hairline to the midscalp, from the vertex to the […]

I love to tell the story of when I was sitting in the audience of a facial plastic surgery conference in San Diego with an esteemed colleague of mine who did not do hair transplants. My colleague said in a haughty way that he could easily tell a hair transplant since they all looked rather […]

It may have been a little while since I have likened my hair transplant team to a Formula One race team but I believe it is worth restating that here and elaborating on why I feel that way. Another example is the peloton in the bicycling world: without the team to help bring the team […]

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 […]

I hope that by reading my last few blogs that you do not believe that the Robot is ideal for all individuals interested in undergoing a hair transplant. I still believe the majority of men and particularly women do just fine with the traditional linear harvesting method. Because the hair needs to be shaved and […]

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 […]

I was on the panel for the Basics course at the ISHRS annual meeting in the Bahamas and explained my algorithm for how I speak with patients in a constructive and efficient manner, and my colleague sitting next to me wrote down my algorithm saying it was a great idea. Accordingly, I thought I should […]

I have attended the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS) annual meeting almost every year for the past decade even when it has been in remote settings like Amsterdam, which it is in a foreign city about every third year to appeal to the foreign audience membership and to live up to the organization’s […]

My hair-transplant coordinator, Emina Karamanovski, was on an extended hiatus over the past year working as the national training director for ARTAS Robotic FUE System by Restoration Robotics. She did an amazing job during that time to train physicians across the United States and the world including me on the ARTAS system. Although she had […]

Emina Karamanovksi, Former Training Director for Restoration Robotics Rejoins the Lam Institute Emina Karamanovksi, a member of Dr. Lam’s hair transplant staff for a number of years prior to her joining Restoration Robotics, Inc. as their national and international training director, is rejoining the staff as a member of the FUE hair transplant team at […]

The ARTAS system is the latest in the development of the FUE (follicular unit excision) method, also referred to as FUE Hair Transplant. Traditionally, a linear strip is taken from the back of the head and if done well (which I do), the incision should not be detectable unless the hair is shorn very close […]

Like anything in life, don’t pursue something if you are not passionate about it. Many of my facial plastic surgery colleagues are intrigued why I love hair transplant so much. They see hair transplants as a tedious, boring job where thousands of grafts are meticulously placed into the head. I see it as an amazing […]

As many of you know, I am an active participant in the education of other surgeons. I run a national course on hair restoration and also participate as faculty in many workshops. I also have written a textbook on hair restoration, Hair Transplant 360, along with many scientific articles on the subject. Most recently, I […]

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 […]

Here is my course promotion for my Hair Transplant Cadaver Workshop for surgeons and assistants to be held on October 14-16, 2011 in St. Louis, MO, at St. Louis University:

When I was recently in Phoenix writing questions for the hair transplant board examination, I had a touching story recounted to me that I wanted to share with you. A fellow hair transplant surgeon had a patient come to him at 59 years of age to ask whether it would be considered too late to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

What has been making rounds on the Internet this past week is a shocking report in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that states that finasteride (marketed as Propecia) for hair loss can cause permanent impotence and related sexual problems. Merck, the manufacturer of the product, has reported between 3 to 8% incidence of sexual side […]

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 […]

The donor area where hair is taken should be treated with the same degree of meticulous respect as the transplanted area. A good donor closure begins with excellent donor harvesting: when the hairs are cleanly removed without notable transection of the hair shafts, the nerve and blood supply are preserved, and the wound is clean […]

There are so many aspects to making excellent recipient sites during a hair-transplant procedure including angle, tilt, direction, pattern, density, etc. We will just focus on one aspect: interlocking. As a reminder to the general reader, recipient sites are the “holes” that are created by the surgeon into which the dissected hair grafts will be […]

All donor closures are not the same, nor is all donor hair harvesting. What is a prerequisite to good donor harvesting and closures is excellent tumescence. Tumescence refers to the injection of fluid under the skin the area for donor harvesting and closure prior to undertaking the harvesting. In this article, we will discuss how […]

Male hair transplant procedures for young men is perhaps one of the most important if not the most important article I will be writing in this blog series, especially considering the preponderance of young men who are on the Internet searching for solutions for their hair loss. With my YouTube channel, I have personally encountered […]

The final area of the scalp that I am going to address is the crown. It is also known as the vertex. Some surgeons differentiate between the two terms, but I personally think that the two should be synonymous. The crown rests on the posterior vertical scalp transitioning to the posterior midscalp (on the horizontal […]

The lateral humps are the areas of the scalp that fall on the sides of the head. They start, as mentioned in the second part of this series, from the transition of the horizontal plane of the midscalp as it transitions over to the vertical side plane of the head and they end just above […]

The midscalp is the term used to describe anything behind the hairline zone, which in turn is defined as the first 2 to 3 centimeters in the front part of the transplant. The midscalp extends from behind the hairline zone all the way back to the crown. The area at which the midscalp turns into […]

In this article series, I will investigate some of the vital areas of the scalp that are transplanted and how I go about doing that. The terms that I describe here are ones that I use to communicate with my team and also how I strategize my approach to transplanting the scalp. The only area […]

Fortunately, today there are medical solutions to manage male pattern baldness, which if started earlier can afford better results. The Internet is filled with hawkers of miracle cures, but there are only two FDA-approved products, finasteride (marketed as Propecia) and minoxidil (marketed as Rogaine) that have proven efficacy. First, we must understand how we lose […]

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 […]

When creating a hairline for a particular individual, it is important to consider many factors, one important element is ethnic sensitivity. Hairlines differ based on gender, facial shape, and age as well, and these are starting points for any physician in his/her design work. However, ethnic differences will be the focus of this article, as […]

Like any surgical procedure, pain can be part of your experience. The goal of this article is to describe ways to manage or minimize this part of a hair-transplant procedure. We will divide this article into how to manage discomfort during a procedure and then how to do so after one as well. What I […]

Reportedly, scientists at the University of California Los Angeles and the Veterans Administration accidentally found a possible cure for baldness when they were evaluating the effects of stress on the gastrointestinal tract. They found that a chemical compound could generate hair growth when a stress hormone associated with hair loss was blocked. Million Mugata, adjunct […]

This is a basic article about how modern hair transplantation works with a little review of the history of hair restoration to understand how far we have come today. When many of my patients come to see me they are simply confused about how a hair transplant works and what they will need to do […]

When I perform a consultation with a prospective patient, I try to offer him/her the core objectives that one should consider for why to undergo a hair transplant procedure beyond the obvious, “I want to have hair to cover my bald scalp.” Yes, this is the basic reason to undergo hair restoration. However, I like […]

As an excellent hair transplant procedure to the scalp can frame an aged-appearing face, strong eyebrows can frame an eye to make it look more attractive and rejuvenated. Eyebrow hair transplants have begun to come into vogue now that techniques and refinements have continued to create better and better results that are seamlessly natural and […]

Although it would seem that finding the right surgeon would qualify as the only thing that matters regarding hair transplantation, it is not the case. Finding the best team to do your work is equally important, as will be discussed in this article. Like building a first-class car, every person on the assembly line is […]

Too often when we have a consultation with a prospective surgeon we are focused entirely on “graft count”. The question goes: “How many grafts will you give me to make my baldness look better?” Clearly without enough “paint” to cover the canvas, the result will be poor. However, if quantity of hair transplanted is a […]

This hair-transplant Web site offers extensive information on the field of hair restoration and on hair loss but more specifically addresses how I think my practice differs from those of others in the industry in terms of quality delivery at every point in the hair-transplant procedure. It offers a significant number of before-and-after photographs of […]

Hair Transplant Quality is based on team work. Dr. Lam talks about hair restoration quality using the story of David Lee Roth and the Brown M & Ms.

Dr. Lam discusses basic postoperative care instructions but focuses on realistic ideas of when hair should start growing in the majority of patients following a hair transplant procedure. This video is only intended for Dr. Lam’s patients and not meant to give universal guarantees but expected guidelines of timing.

I am very proud of our sell-out first year last year in which Emina and I co-directed our First Annual Hair Restoration course for budding hair transplant surgeons in St. Louis.  We have a stellar course lined up this year that is quadruple the size of last year with two levels for physicians and two […]

Dallas hair transplant surgeon, Dr. Sam Lam, would like to wish his hair transplant coordinator, Emina aka Yoda, a very special happy birthday! Watch the fun video of Emina and Digna’s Birthday:

Hair Transplant per graft costs are a major concern for my prospective patients. In this video, I try to explain my philosophy regarding how I view this important subject. Hopefully, I can explain it better in this video than I can in a written text:

Dallas hair transplant surgeon, Dr. Sam Lam, describes the nuances of a female hairline to better understand how to perform a natural female hair transplant using the principles outlined in this video. The female hairline is completely different than a male hairline in that it is rounded and closed at the temples without any fronto-temporal […]

Is bigger better?  I personally do not think so.  Too many hair transplant outfits are focused on volume.  More and more people driven through the mill.  As a hair transplant surgeon, I am adamantly opposed to this philosophy, especially when it comes to the discipline of hair transplant surgery.  I truly believe that hair restoration […]

Hair Transplant Focus:  Understanding the Lateral Hump In my effort to educate the public on the facts of what I know as a hair transplant surgeon, I have come up with a video to discuss one particular part of the scalp, the lateral hump, in great detail to offer the thoughts of how I see […]

Hair Transplant Surgeon Devises New Way of Seeing the Head for Hair Restoration Using a Box Model The art of hair restoration and hair transplant requires an excellent understanding of how hair grows on each part of the head.  I have devised a method of thinking of how the hair grows in each part of […]

The blog section that appears on hairtx.com, and any related information that appears on those websites are intended only for general educational and information purposes. Accordingly, any information contained on these above-stated websites should not be construed as medical advice, evaluation, or consultation and should never be considered a replacement for a formal evaluation by […]