A hair transplant is the best possible solution available at the moment to deal with pattern baldness. It can be performed on a variety of patients with different hair types and baldness patterns. Unfortunately, not everyone can achieve the same results.
There are some people whose hair type makes them a challenging candidate for hair transplant. That may be the case for people who want to have a hair transplant with fine hair.
Categorising your hair as fine, thin, thick, and/or coarse isn’t easy. That’s because they can be a combination of the two. You can have thick and fine hair at the same time. You might think that you know for sure that you have fine, dense hair, but that might not necessarily be the case.
And the results of the hair transplant have a lot to do with the type of hair you have. As the surgery uses the patient’s own hair, the hair quality will have a significant impact on the final results.
Of course, if you have thin hair on the sides and the back of your head, the surgeon will transplant that fine hair in the balding regions. So, you will grow fine hair after transplantation.
Due to the nature of your hair, you may feel that you haven’t achieved the desired hair density after getting the surgery. That’s because the thinness of the hair makes it difficult for them to provide more coverage. Moreover, it is also smaller, especially in regards to its diameter.
But before we get into that, you should know a little more about your hair type.
What Are the Different Hair Types?
There’s a difference between thin and fine hair and thick and coarse hair. One term refers to the diameter of the hair strand, and the other refers to hair density.
Hair classified as fine has a diameter of no more than 50μm (microns). On the other hand, coarse hair has a diameter of around 120μm. Fine and coarse hair refers to the diameter of the hair strand. The latter has a bigger diameter than the former.
Next, we have the hair density. It is simply the number of hair strands per square inch on your scalp. The average person has about 100,000 strands of hair on their scalp and around 2000 per square inch of scalp.
This means that a person who has fine hair doesn’t always have low hair density. A person with fine hair can have dense hair. This means that they have more hair strands per square inch, even if it’s thin.
Similarly, people with coarse hair can have fewer than 2000 hair strands per square inch, which makes their hair sparse and coarse at the same time.
How Can You Find Out Your Hair Type?
How to know if you have fine or coarse hair? Simply take a fallen strand of your hair between your fingers and feel it. If it’s barely “feel-able”, then you probably have fine hair.
However, if you can feel the coarseness of your hair, then, well, you have coarse hair. Moreover, coarse hair feels stiffer and drier due to the presence of more protein.
Another way to find out your hair type is that you can compare the circumference of your hair strand with a piece of thread. If it’s thinner than the thread, fine hair it is. More circumference than the thread means that you have coarse hair. This at-home test will give you an idea of whether or not you’ll have a hair transplant with fine hair.
To find out the hair density, you can simply take a look at the thickness of your ponytail; more than four inches means your hair is thick and less than two inches means your hair is thin. If you can’t tie your hair in a ponytail, just take a look at your head and see if your scalp is visible through the hair. The greater the visibility, the lesser the hair density.
It may be true that a person with fine hair looks like they don’t have as much hair density because of the lesser coverage provided by the hair. This is despite the fact that they might have average hair strands per square inch.
But since coarser hair has a greater circumference, it occupies more area. This might give the appearance of more hair strands per square inch, even if that isn’t the case.
Can You Successfully Have A Hair Transplant with Fine Hair?
If you have fine hair, then, for sure, you can have a hair transplant. However, conveying realistic expectations is important here. When determining the suitability of a candidate for a hair transplant, our surgeons check the hair density of the patients.
If the person has thick hair density, they’re a good candidate for hair transplant surgery. Remember, your hair density isn’t related to the coarseness of your hair. You can have thick and fine hair or coarse and thin hair.
However, it is possible that if a person who has fine hair is experiencing hair loss, their scalp will become more visible than if it happened to a person with coarse hair. The greater diameter provides an extra cover of sorts to the scalp.
Our surgeons pay special attention to those patients who have fine hair. That’s because it will impact the surgical procedure. If a patient has thinner hair, our surgeon uses a thinner punch tool.
This is done so that the surgeon doesn’t end up making big cuts on the scalp. If the punches are bigger, even if you have fine hair, it’ll take longer to heal and cause unnecessary damage to the surrounding skin.
The surgeon will use a thinner punch tool, which is a needle-like tool that cuts around the graft. This helps easily remove the hair graft from the scalp so that it is easily taken to another region.
Another thing to consider for a hair transplant with fine hair is the distance between each hair graft. If the surgeon places two or more hair grafts with little space between them, since the hair in the graft is fine, it won’t be able to cover a large balding area. It’ll only end up covering a small balding region.
So, the space between the grafts is very carefully considered when a hair transplant with fine hair is being done. This also depends on the individual case and the expectations of the patient. If the bald area is not that large, placing the grafts closer to each other will create a natural, denser look.
What Kind of Results Can You Expect from Hair Transplant with Fine Hair?
Because of the hair type, especially in the case of thin, fine hair, the results of the hair transplant may not seem that satisfactory to the patient.
Hair transplant with fine hair is faced with the dilemma of whether a smaller area should be covered with greater density or a large area with less density. So, your area of baldness will also play a role in the final hair density that you achieve after hair transplant surgery.
Still, in the case of a hair transplant with fine hair, your hair may look sparse even if you don’t experience hair loss after the surgery. Your hair grafts will survive and grow, but still, it might look as if the hair transplant is weak due to the diameter of the hair. Your surgeon will make sure that the spacing and angling of the hair grafts are done in such a way that it gives a fuller appearance.
But keep in mind that if the donor area is too weak, this isn’t possible. We’ll make sure to discuss this with you before the surgery so that you know what to expect after the surgery takes place. One way to get a better idea of the results is to look at the before-after images of patients whose hair is the same as yours.
What About the Donor Area in Case of Hair Transplant with Fine Hair?
Of course, since the hair grafts are taken from the donor area, it will impact the density of the region after hair grafts are taken from there. A person’s scalp becomes more visible, especially if the patient decides to keep their hair short. Hair transplant with fine hair strands will make it difficult to provide complete coverage.
Every good surgeon takes this aspect of surgery into consideration. It is carefully reviewed while the treatment plan is being made. In this case, it’s not possible to extract too many grafts from the donor area, as your hair might appear too sparse and thinly spread out after the surgery.
In A Nutshell
If you’re planning to have hair transplant surgery in Turkey, determining if you have thin, thick, fine or coarse hair is important. This will impact the results of the surgery.
The good news is that a hair transplant with fine hair is possible. To ensure its success, the surgeon will make use of specialized surgical tools. Moreover, he/she will make sure that the placement of the grafts looks natural; the scalp isn’t too visible.
