DiStefano Hair Restoration Blog

Hair Replacement: Boston Hair Restoration Surgeons

Hair thinning can happen as a result of stress, injury, medication side effects, and any number of environmental events. And in many cases, these common forms of hair loss can be reversed with patience and lifestyle changes. But the primary cause of receding hairlines and widening parts is genetic, and when inherited hair loss begins to take effect, no amount of waiting and watching will bring back what’s slowly disappearing over time.  

Boston Hair Restoration Surgeons Can Help  

But don’t be afraid. If you’re finding more hair in your comb that you used to, now is not the time to panic, and it’s not the time to give up and accept the inevitable. Investigate Boston hair restoration surgeons and find out more about the state-of-the art treatments that can replace your lost hair with minimal pain, minimal scarring, fast healing, and minimal risk.   

Boston hair restoration surgeons like Dr. DiStefano have the training and experience to offer the two most sophisticated and effective hair restoration procedures, called FUE (follicular unit extraction), and FUT (follicular unit transplantation.)  

FUE and FUT: What’s the Difference?  

FUT is a more established and traditional form of hair restoration surgery in which a small strip of skin is removed from an area of healthy hair growth called a donor site. The strip is then separated into tiny sections, or grafts, by medical experts who use a microscope to isolate small pieces supporting a few healthy hair follicles each. These grafts are then transplanted to the recipient area with miniscule incisions that heal within a few days.  

FUE is a newer procedure in which Boston hair restoration surgeons remove hair from the donor site using a nearly microscopic instrument called the Safe System. Instead of a strip of skin, the individual follicular units are extracted one by one, so there’s no incision left behind and no scarring after the scalp heals.   Both procedures are safe, effective, and require only a local anesthetic. Both typically result in the restoration of a full, natural-looking head of hair. Arrange a consultation with a Boston hair restoration surgeon to determine which procedure will work best for you.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

How to Find the Top Hair Transplant Surgeons in Your Area

If you’ve decided it’s time to reach out for help and take action to slow the progress of your hair loss, congratulations! The first step is the hardest, and your hair restoration journey is already underway. The next step will involve finding a hair transplant surgeon with a highly skilled medical team who can make sure your treatment has the best possible chance of success. As you search for the top hair transplants surgeons in your city, keep the following considerations in mind.

Find the Top Hair Transplant Surgeons Near You  

A great hair transplant surgeon can mean the difference between a full, natural-looking head of hair and a transplant fiasco with pain, scarring, and less-than-perfect results. Start by gathering recommendations from family and friends who have undergone the procedure in the past. Make note of how successful their transplants were or were not, and listen carefully to their stories.  

When you’ve narrowed your top hair transplant surgeons down to a short list of five or fewer, arrange consultations with the surgeons who will be completing your procedure. If you can’t seem to schedule a meeting with the actual surgeon (not a spokesperson), that suggests a red flag. Talk to the person who will be working on your case, not a substitute.  

Ask your potential hair transplant surgeon for before and after photos of previous patients, and examine the photos carefully for scarring or skin puckering at the donation site. You may also want to ask for contact information for these previous patients, so you can find out about their experience in more detail.   Finally, make sure all of the top hair transplant surgeons you consider are fully licensed, trained and experienced with the procedure you choose. Some hair transplant surgeons are qualified to perform state of the art procedures like follicular unit extraction, but many are not. If in doubt about a surgeon’s credentials, keep looking.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

How Can the Best Hair Transplant Doctor Help You Combat Hair Loss?

Is your receding hair line inching out of your control, despite your best efforts to keep it in place? Have you tried hats, creams, gels, and dozens of messy home remedies with no success? If you’ve done everything you can do to slow the progress of thinning and disappearing hair, it’s time to face the truth and reach out for help.  

You don’t have to accept hair loss lying down. Fight back against the effects of genetics and environmental conditions that can take away our hair and everything it says about who we are. You can win this battle, and the best hair transplant doctor in Boston can help.

The Best Hair Transplant Doctor can Help You Slow the Effects of Time  

The restoration of hair to denuded areas can be conducted using two primary techniques called follicular unit transplantation (FUT), or follicular unit extraction (FUE). Both of these methods can put back what age, injury, stress, or genetics have taken away. Hair loss isn’t an inevitable part of the aging process. At least it doesn’t have to be.    

The Best Hair Transplant Doctor Can Restore Hair to Thinning Areas with No Pain and No Visible Scarring  

Between these two hair transplant procedures, FUT has been an effective and trusted method for a longer period of time. This process involves the removal of a small piece of scalp from an area of healthy hair growth. The piece is then divided into miniscule grafts containing a few hair follicles each, which are transplanted into the areas affected by hair loss.  

FUE is a newer method involving a state-of-the-art procedure that extracts the individual follicular units directly, using a precision instrument with a nearly microscopic blade called the Safe System. The principle is similar to that of FUT, but FUE involves no visible scarring and only a day or two of healing time at the donation and transplantation sites. Both methods are almost completely painless and can result in the restoration of a full healthy head of hair in just a few weeks. Contact our office for more details and feel free to arrange a consultation with our trained surgical team.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

Why Choose Follicular Unit Transplant?

There are many reasons why your hair may be receding, thinning, or disappearing. Some forms of hair loss result from stress or illness, and sometimes hair loss can be a side effect of medications, like those commonly prescribed for heart disease, depression or high blood pressure.  

But if you’ve determined that your situation is genetic, not circumstantial or environmental, then your hair loss will probably be permanent. The receding line won’t advance again on its own, and you’ll soon be facing two options: You can accept your hair loss gracefully, or you can take action.  

How can you take action against permanent hair loss?   

Hair transplantation, FUT, or Follicular Unit Transplantation, is safe, effective, and has been provided by licensed hair loss centers for nearly half a century. Over the years, the procedure has kept pace with advances in medical science, and the precision techniques involved in FUT have become increasingly streamlined.  

At this point, a follicular unit transplant can usually be completed as an outpatient procedure involving local anesthetics and a rapid healing period. If you choose follicular unit transplantation as your defense against hair loss, you’ll schedule a consultation with a surgical professional, who will discuss your case with you and set a date for your surgery.  

On that day, a small incision will be made and a small strip of skin removed from a donor area, or an area of healthy hair growth. That strip will be divided into pieces, or grafts, containing a few hair follicles each. These grafts will then be transplanted via miniscule incisions at the recipient site, and healthy growth should begin to take effect as soon as the healing process is complete. FUT is a permanent solution with almost no risk, minimal pain and scarring, and no side effects. Ointments and miracle cures are not effective and may create more problems than they solve. Choose FUT instead, then put your hair loss behind you and move on with your life.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

Why Hair Loss Happens and How a Hair Loss Center Can Help

Hair loss and hair thinning are common among both men and women, and can be caused by a wide variety of factors. If your hair seems to be receding, becoming fragile and frail, or disappearing in smooth circular patches, don’t panic. Consider the following possible causes, and if the problem persists, visit a hair loss center you trust where you can arrange a consultation with medical professionals and learn more about your options.  

Causes of Hair Loss and Thinning  

Age: The most common cause of thinning hair is age, and there isn’t much that can be done to prevent this. Hair naturally loses luster, thickness, and resilience with time.  

Stress: A few months after a difficult life event or an episode of extreme shock, the hair shafts may become brittle and thin for a temporary period. If you see a few more hairs in the drain during this time, just be patient. The lost hair will usually grow back.  

Auto immune disorders and thyroid issues: If you’re dealing with a known disorder, your hair loss may be linked to your existing condition. If you don’t have any disorders that you’re aware of, your doctor can perform a complete diagnosis.   

Medication: Hair loss may result from a variety of treatments for cancer, high blood pressure, heart conditions, depression, and arthritis.  

Male and female pattern baldness: Some forms of hair loss are genetic, and may take effect at any stage of life, even as early as the teenage years. Genetic hair loss is usually permanent, and if you’re battling pattern baldness, you may want to explore surgical hair restoration options including transplants.  

How a Hair Loss Center can Help

At an advanced hair loss center like ours, trained medical professionals can review your case and determine the causes behind your thinning or disappearing hair. We’ll sit down with you and discuss your situation, reviewing your overall health, your genetic background, and any current mediations and stresses that may be affecting your hair. If necessary, we’ll discuss your surgical options. Our procedures are state of the art, our success rates are extremely high, and our medical staff has the training and experience to help you find the hair loss solution that’s right for you.

 

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

Tips to Finding the Best Hair Transplant Surgeons

The best hair transplant surgeons are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the rest. But asking the right questions, recognizing red flags, and careful due diligence can help you find a qualified hair transplant surgeon who will take your case seriously and do what’s necessary to earn your trust.  

Credentials and Reliability  

FUT, or follicular unit transplantation, and FUE, or follicular unit extraction, are two popular and highly effective hair restoration procedures. FUT is an older process that involves removing a small strip of skin from a donor area of healthy hair growth. The strip is then cut into small pieces, or grafts, that will be transplanted to the recipient site. FUE, by contrast, is a newer procedure involving the removal of individual follicular units, or nearly microscopic grafts of just a few hair follicles at a time, from the donor site. This meticulous procedure involves state of the art equipment and multiple stereo microscopes, and not all hair restoration professionals are trained and licensed to complete this procedure properly.  

If FUE is your preferred restoration method, the best hair transplant surgeons will happily provide all the credentials proving their qualifications and experience with this procedure. If your surgeon is reluctant to discuss credentials or demonstrate experience, it might be wise to keep looking.    

References and Additional Details

To find the best hair transplant surgeon, you may also want to ask for plenty of before and after photos of previous patients. In the photos, look for signs of puckering and scarring at the donor site. Ask for phone of email contact information for these patients as well, and when you reach out to them, ask meaningful questions their restoration process. Are they satisfied with their new hair? Did their treatment result in any pain or scarring? What are their general opinions of the transplant surgeon? Satisfied clients should be pleased to tell you about their experience.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

How Safe and Effective is a Hair Transplant?

Clients come to our clinic with a long list of frequently asked questions: How does Follicular Unit Extraction work? How new is this practice? How long will it take for the hair to grow back? etc. But the most common questions we receive usually deal with two important topics, and those are 1) potential risk—is a hair transplant safe? And 2) effectiveness—does it work? Clients want a hair restoration procedure that isn’t dangerous, and they want one that works.  

Is a Hair Transplant Safe?  

Yes. The follicular unit extraction and follicular unit transplantation procedures that we offer in our facility come with very low risk. FUE involves a state-of-the-art follicular extraction technique that allows us to remove miniscule grafts from the donor area, grafts of only 1 to 3 follicles each. This causes almost no trauma at the donor site and requires only a simple, local anesthetic. At the recipient site, the incisions made in the scalp are nearly microscopic and heal completely within days, leaving no scar and no sensation but minor itching.  The procedure can be completed in a single afternoon. Both FUE and FUT are minimally invasive and the risk of infection is very low.  

Does It Work?  

Yes. Hair follicles are surprisingly resilient and easy to transplant. In the early days of hair restoration—the 1950’s and 60’s—this actually caused problems, since clumsy procedures would often take effect and thrive even when hair had been transplanted improperly. But medical technology has come a long way, and the surgical precision of transplant procedures has only increased. So the chances of success with both FUT and FUE are quite high. Both typically result in the restoration of a natural-looking head of hair.

But of course, each situation comes with a unique set of variables. So you’ll need to discuss your particular hair loss—including the reasons, the extent of the loss, and your own expectations-- with our surgical experts before you make a decision.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

Why You Should Consider the Best Hair Transplant Surgeon

If you’re finally ready to face the reality of your thinning hair, then congratulations. The first step to solving the problem is confronting it directly, and this requires courage. You now recognize that it’s time to take action and stop blaming your widening part or receding hair line on shadows and bad lighting.

So what comes next? If courage is the first step, what’s the second? You can cover your head when you go out, shave it completely, or simply resign yourself to your hair loss and try to wear it gracefully. Or you can fight back. To combat your hair loss, you’ll need the help of a talented medical team led by the best hair transplant surgeon in your area, a team that will present you with all of your options and stand ready with the state-of-the-art hair restoration procedure that best meets your needs.  

Finding the Best Hair Transplant Surgeon for You 

As you arrange consultations with surgical transplant teams, you’ll want to know what you’re looking for and be able to ask the right questions. First of all, you need a surgeon who’s licensed and fully qualified to perform the procedure you choose. It’s worth knowing that FUE, or follicular unit extraction, is highly advanced procedures that many transplant surgeons are not technically licensed to perform. But many of these facilities will offer the procedure anyway, so don’t assume your surgeon is qualified. Ask to see evidence. 

You’ll also want to ask for plenty of before-and-after photos of previous patients. Make sure the photos haven’t been staged in a manipulative way involving lighting effects or camera angles. All before-and-after shots should be taken in the same room, with the same background, and at the same proximity. 

If your surgeon claims to perform FUE, ask how many stereo microscopes will be used during the procedure. The best hair transplant surgeon will use several microscopes and a special precision instrument to remove miniscule units of 3 or 4 follicles at a time from the donor site, leaving almost no scarring and a rapidly healing, natural-looking head of hair.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

Hair Transplant Surgical Procedures: A Short History

In the 1950s and early 1960’s, the first hair transplant procedures were attempted, and patients and medical professionals were genuinely surprised when they appeared to work. It seemed like a kind of miracle that we could take grafts of hair from the back of the head and move that hair to the top and the sides without slowing or stopping the growth of healthy follicles. The success of these early surgeries came as welcome news to men and women who had become resigned to genetic, illness, or injury related hair loss. With the new availability of the hair transplant, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and other cities became home to clinics that made these procedures available to anyone who could afford them.  

But compared to modern transplant procedures, these early grafts were very clumsy. The section of tissue removed from the donor area was large, and scarring was almost inevitable. When the new hair was transplanted, the grafts were awkward and unnatural looking and sometimes the new growth areas had a doll-like appearance. Success was also a mixed proposition at times, because hair continued to grow and thrive even when grafts were placed improperly.  

Advances in Hair Transplant Techniques  

Over the next few decades, surgeons offering hair transplants in Boston and elsewhere began to improve the technique, making grafts smaller and smaller. Incisions became shorter, healing times were faster, and more healthy follicles were extracted from each piece of tissue removed from the donor site.  

In the 1990s, hair transplant surgeons finally developed a technique that could remove individual follicular units of just 3 or 4 follicles each from the donor site. This greatly reduced the possibility of scarring, and since the new grafts were nearly microscopic in size, the growth of hair at the recipient site seemed much more natural.    At this point, a hair transplant in Boston or any other major city may involve a state-of-the art procedure called follicular unit extraction. With this technique, surgeons can remove just few follicles at a time using a miniscule, multi-bladed device that serves as a kind of punch. Once each follicular unit is withdrawn, the follicles can be sorted and separated using stereo microscopes, which means more healthy follicles can be transplanted from every graft.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.

Choosing an FUT Procedure and Caring for Your New Hair

The FUT hair transplant procedure, also called Follicular Unit Transplantation, is an advanced hair transplant technique available to those who are suffering from genetic, illness-related, or injury-related hair loss. This procedure can be used to transplant healthy hair from the donor area to thinning or bald areas of the scalp or eyebrows. Our clients often approach the hair restoration process and the FUT and follicular unit transplantation procedure with a few frequently asked questions including the following:

What is an FUT Hair Transplant?

FUT Hair transplantation usually begins with the removal of a small strip of skin containing healthy hair follicles from a donor site. The strip is then cut into tiny pieces, or grafts, containing  only 1, 2 or 3  follicles each, which will be transplanted to a recipient area with absent or thinning hair growth.    

What is an FUE Hair Transplant?  

FUE follicular unit extraction uses this principle to move healthy hair follicles to recipient areas where they’re most needed. But this particular procedure is state-of-the-art and highly advanced. Instead of a strip of skin, FUE relies on a miniscule device to take follicles one by one from the donor area. Once these grafts are removed, they do not leave any visible scarring so that patient may wear their hair very short in the back of the head. So it’s highly effective, but minimally invasive.      

What Happens After My Transplant Procedure is Complete?

After your transplant is complete, you can treat your new hair follicles exactly as you treated your original hair. Just be gentle with your scalp during the first week after the process while the incisions are still healing. You may experience minor itching at the incision sites.    Before the procedure, make sure your surgical team is truly qualified to perform your chosen procedure before you make a commitment. While popular, FUE is new and relatively rare, so some facilities may claim expertise that they don’t actually have. For specific questions about your own hair restoration process, contact Dr. DiStefano’s office and speak with our team of medical experts.

DiStefano Hair Restoration Center is committed to helping men and women take charge of their appearance and self-esteem through hair restoration options. For more than 16 years, DiStefano has been at the forefront of the hair transplantation industry, and has performed more than 5,000 successful hair transplant procedures.