Archive for February, 2010

Hair Care Beverly Hills interview with Dr. Mohebi

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Hair Care Beverly Hills

Here is the content of the interview with US Hair Restoration’s Medical Director, Dr. Mohebi done by BuziMoms which is published in hair care Beverly Hills.  The interviewer asked several hair loss and hair restoration questions from Dr. Mohebi based on the requirements of the visitors and readers of the site.  Here are the questions and Dr. Mohebi’s answers:

An Interview With Dr. Prasa Mohebi, M.D. , A Qualified Hair Restoration Surgeon For Moms In Beverly Hills

Dr. Mohebi interview

BuzyMoms: If a hair loss patient has already had a transplant with another doctor and is disappointed with the results, can the procedure be redone or is repair possible?

Dr. Mohebi: Yes, hair restoration surgery repairs are a good portion of our operations performed in our Southern California offices (located in Beverly Hills, Encino and Orange County).  Many people may have unnatural results from previous hair transplants due to the older techniques, but some even have problems with recent hair restoration due to technical issues or lack of proper judgment on the part of the hair transplant surgeon. In most cases, the repair is easy and can be done in one or two sessions.

BuzyMoms: Is there a minimum age for hair loss surgery?

Dr. Mohebi: Hair transplant surgeons used to say that 24 was the minimum age to perform a hair restoration procedure.  However, nowadays microscopic techniques being used to evaluate the miniaturization of hair can assist surgeons in predicting the final pattern of hair loss. By being able to predict each patient’ s  final stages of hair loss, we are able to see where the pattern of baldness is heading and recommend hair transplant surgery at an earlier age.

BuzyMoms: Won’ t my bare scalp be showing in the back of my head once the donor hair is taken?

Dr. Mohebi: If you do not plan on shaving your hair, your donor wound will never be visible.  However, if you plan on shaving your head for any reason, you may need to have a FUE or Follicular Unit Extraction procedure done rather than the general FUT procedure.  This method eliminates the visibility of a linear scar on the back of your head and is the best option for patients who plan on shaving their head or keeping their hair very short in the future.

BuzyMoms: Do you provide free consultations?

Dr. Mohebi: Yes, the initial consultation with us is always free in any of our three hair transplant offices in Beverly Hills, Encino and Orange County.

BuzyMoms: What type of information should be brought to the consultation?

Dr. Mohebi: Anything related to your hair loss and hair restoration, including medical, surgical or even cosmetic changes that you like and may help you have a better result after a hair restoration procedure.

BuzyMoms: Are lab tests required prior to surgery?

Dr. Mohebi: We may need lab work for men or women who have hair loss without showing a typical pattern that we see in most male or female patterned hair loss or in people who have lost hair due to any other medical conditions such as thyroid problems, hormonal imbalances or lack of certain elements such as Iron.  We also need certain lab works from patients who have medical risk factors for surgery like diabetes to make sure those medical conditions are under control before we can pursue with the hair transplant surgery.

Hair transplant cost for CTTA

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Q:

Dear Doctor,

I am 14 years old and I have hair loss in form of CTTA and my parents agreed to let me get the hair transplant, but will it actually take months for my hair to grow and I need to know how much it cost for the operation please.

CTTA - Congenital Temporal Triangular AlopeciaA:

Congenital Temporal Triangular Alopecia (CTTA) is a congenital condition that is noted by parents at birth or soon after that.  CTTA could easily be treated with hair transplantation at any age.  At US Hair Restoration, we charge patients with the number of grafts and since patients with CTTA only need a small number of grafts, the cost falls into our minimum charge category. Having said that you need to have a consultation with us so we can confirm the diagnosis and make sure you are a good candidate for a hair transplant surgery.

Transplanted hair will grow in 2 to 3 months after hair restoration surgery and will become even better than that for the following months after that.  Since the location of the transplanted hair is only in the temple areas, it may not show as much since most people can easily comb their hair to cover the hair loss area.

Please feel free to call our office at 1 (888) 302-8747 and schedule your complementary consultation at one of our Southern California offices. If you are contacting from other states, you can send us an inquiry through our website and we contact you to complete your online consultation.
We look forward to seeing you soon.

Dr. Parsa Mohebi

Click blow to see a before and after photo gallery of a patient with Congenital Temporal Triangular Alopecia (CTTA):

Congenital Temporal Triangular Alopecia

Sex and Hair Loss

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

balding and sexI visited a 30 year old patiet for a hair loss consultation a while back who believed he lost his hair due to having too much sex.  The fact is that most patients attempt to find a reason for rapid loss of hair in the early stages.  Thas is often the same age that they are most active sexualy.  The combination of the two may convince them that they may have lost their hair due to having too much sex in those years.

These people are not the only balding peole who try to find an environmental situation and blame it for their genetic balding problem.  Many people blame their partner, bad relations, stressful situations and other significant events in their lives for their hair loss.  The reality is that gene, sex and time are the only major contributors to male or female patterned hair loss and environmental factors only may accelerate the presentation of the hair loss.  Normal people without balding gene may lose hair for different reason, namely stressful conditions, but the hair always grow back when stressor is gone.   This is not the case for people who have the gene of hair loss that may never grow their back what they lost after losing it due to stressors.

Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS)

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Dr. Mohebi,

You performed a hair transplant on me to make a female hair line as part of my male to female transgender process.  I recently decided to do a scalp surgery that may require a scalp advancing procedure.  My Dr. Will transplant hairs along the scar in hairline.  I am not convinced this will be enough, and we may need to do one final pass after all is done to be sure, possibly the middle of next year.  I’ll have to wait and see, money is also an issue.

A:

Good luck with your scalp advancement surgery. Please do your research and make sure your plastic surgeon does perform hair transplant on a regular basis before letting him place hair on your hairline.  It is especially important that he has experience with creating hairline for transgenders.

If he is not doing hair transplant on a regular basis as is the case for many cosmetic surgeons, it might still be OK to have him put the hair removed during the scalp advancement surgery on the top areas, where you still need more reinforcement.

Hairline is very meticulous specially for male to female trans gender patients.  We can easily repair the hairline in front of the scar of your scalp advancement surgery.  It will be more difficult if there is less than perfect transplanted hair on the hairline area.  that requires removing the hair grafts that are transplanted out of their normal locations and reuse them in the other areas.

Mixoxidil Shampoo

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Q:

Hi Dr.,  I saw your TV show, and would like to ask you if it is ok for me to buy minoxidil and dissolve it in the shampoo?
Also there are products that says gradually will change the color of my hair to natural color, are they safe to use? wouldn’t they interfere with my scalp respiration?

Thanks a lot

A:

Minoxidil mixed with shampoo

Minoxidil is one of the FDA approved medications for balding prevention and hair loss treatment.  The recommended dose and method for its use is applying it topically on balding area twice a day and leaving the product without washing it off.
Although combination of minoxidil with shampoos are available commercially, I don’t believe you can get a complete result by using them because:
1.    Minoxidil would be diluted with shampoo and water and that will reduce its strength.
2.    The active ingredient (minoxidil) would be rinsed and it would not get enough time to have contact with the scalp skin.
3.    It would be less likely that it is used twice a day, which is the recommended method for its maximum result.

Hair product for white hair

To answer your second question, there are many products that are claimed to change the color of white and de-pigmented hair to a normal one.  Most of them are herbal extracts and there is just not enough long term studies that prove their safety that I am aware of.

Best Ever Price For a Hair Transplant

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

hair transplant cost reductionAccording to a recent L.A. Times article, people in our current economy are scaling back on elective cosmetic treatments, and finding ways to negotiate costs and figuring out what’s really necessary (e.g. Botox) and what’s not (e.g. massages and body scrubs).  We have posted on Recession and hair transplant cost before.

US Hair Restoration understands that people have found themselves in challenging economic circumstances. Our goal has always been, “offering quality hair transplant for everyone”. We want to relieve the pressure on people by responding to patients’ needs for more affordable hair transplant prices.

Every year, we have a summer hair transplant special, but this year, we’re going to offer it several months in advance as part of an unprecedented and huge hair transplant cost reduction. And we promise it will be the lowest price ever for our hair transplants using our standby program.

For those who are seriously considering getting a hair restoration procedure, the best time to get one is when we have this reduced-price offer. This is a limited offer and the price might not ever be this low. Now is the time to take advantage of it.

Offering hair transplant cost discounts in our standby program helps us to fill all openings in our operating room schedules. On the other hand, for those people who can be a bit more flexible with the timing of the surgery, it helps them get a US Hair Restoration-quality hair transplant done at historically low rates, at one of our Southern California offices: Beverly Hills, Encino, and Orange County.

The bright side to the recession is that retailers and companies are offering lower-than-usual prices for their products, knowing consumers have become increasingly tight-fisted about their cash. Our earlier-than-usual summer special is our way of saying we are sensitive to our patients’ financial circumstances.

Check US Hair Restoration for more info on our hair transplant promotions.

Baseball Cap – Hair Loss?

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Q:

hey doctor:

is it true i can lose hair by wearing a baseball cap a lot of the time? if that’s the case, then i guess baseball players are good candidates for hair transplants! =P. but really, is there any truth to that? I read that it doesn’t have an effect on a person’s hair, but i wanted to verify with an actually hair loss doctor.

A:

We can lose hair due to environmental trauma to the hair shaft and, consequently, to the hair follicles. The name of this condition is traction alopecia; it can be seen when people braid their hair very tightly. One type of traction alopecia is called turban alopecia, for people who wear turbans on their head for long periods of time and when they wear it tightly. Baseball caps are regularly used by people, and I have not seen it in those people who wear them. However, you can guess that a tight cap of any kind may mimic the turban effect and may cause traction alopecia in which hair follicles are being pulled over time, which destroy them eventually.