Pubic Hair Transplant & a Brief History of Hair Transplant Surgery

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This may be an interesting topic, which is pubic hair transplantation. It’s interesting that the trend in the last 20, 30 years in the United States is to have shaved area in that area and not to have hair. But what’s interesting is that in my textbook, I wrote a few years ago, my Italian colleague says that there’s a trend to have, want to have more hair there. And so pubic hair transplantation involves transplanting hairs from the back of the scalp into the pubic area. What’s interesting about the history of hair restoration is that modern hair restoration began with pubic hair restoration back in 1939 and 1943. Akuna into Tamara where the first modern hair transplant surgeons to effectively do hair transplant and found that the hair has actually survived historically. A man Yohanas Diefenbach back in the 19th century was contemplating this and did some with feathers and did something with animals.

But the first modern hair transplant was performed in Japan by Accouting Tamara in 39 43. The reason why we didn’t get a lot of evidence for their work for so many years and decades was due to the fact that this was done, during world war two, of course, you know, they lost the war and this information was lost for many years. Interestingly enough, about 10 year ago, maybe not 10 years ago, maybe eight years ago, I met his grandson at one of the international society of hair restoration surgery conferences but they were really the pioneers. We oftentimes give credit to Norman Orangethruk and the 1950s who really did understand the concept of donor dominance. In other words, he is the first person to understand that hair has moved from the back of the head to the front of the head should be preserved as such, but it was the history of Akuna Tamara that did a pubic hair restoration back in the thirties and forties.

And he said, well, why would someone want that back then? What was going on? So it’s interesting. Culturally is the Japanese do a lot of public bathing and there is a particular condition in young Asian females where they actually have hair loss in the pubic area and that’s considered a sign of disease. And so since they did public bathing and they didn’t have hair in the pubic region that was actually considered a sign of disease. So they felt shameful. So the first transplants in 20th century was performed to restore pubic hair loss. As I said, oftentimes this is much more common in Europe, whereas in America, people want the exact opposite.