Body Hair Transplantation (BHT) is one way that patients with a small donor supply can significantly improve their hairline. A broad range of skills and experience are crucial in this procedure, as the surgeon must both be familiar with FUE (or CIT®) and body hair harvesting/grafting. Even more essential, the surgeon must be able to blend the two hair types convincingly.
Skilled surgeons should make BHT appear uniform with FUE (or CIT®). Doing so requires blending the body hair with the head hair. Doing so helps preempt the noticeability of any coarseness of the body hair. Coarseness itself usually dissipates with time according to Dr. Woods, the pioneer of BHT, as he finds transplanted body hair tends to take on the characteristics of where it grows. Results, of course, can vary a great deal but body hair does not always take on the desirable traits of head hair -it may remain coarse and short for the duration of the transplant. Blending and other placement, therefore, is the most integral skill of any BHT surgeon.
Blending itself can take on different forms, as it depends on the patient and procedure. Almost always, however, a BHT involves placing head hair at the hairline or other noticeable parts and then, slowly, blending it in with body hair. Transplants involving the back of the head, meanwhile, usually involves an even blend to promote thickness without evident coarseness.
Perhaps the greatest element that a BHT depends on is donor availability. BHT is an emerging option still, but the transplant type is primarily meant to enable patients who would otherwise be viable for CIT® or FUE. CIT® is actually ideal with BHT as the former can regenerate, with ACell, 30% to 40% of all follicle remnants from extraction: the equivalent of 300 to 400 new hairs for every 1000 single extractions. No other transplant type is so complimentary for BHT, as it maintains a higher level of density in donor areas. Learn more about BHT and CIT® on their respective pages and schedule a consultation today!
