The donor area is the most important factor that plays a role in providing optimum aesthetic benefit from hair transplantation. The donor (donor) field capacity directly affects the success of the procedure. Today, the FUE technique is preferred in most of the hair transplant operations. FUE, which stands for Follicular Unit Extraction, is in demand as a more contemporary hair transplant technology with the advantage of being a minimally invasive method. With FUE, hair follicles collected one by one from the donor area with special tip punch devices are transferred to the recipient area one by one. The hair follicles transplanted into the scalp need to look and behave like hair so that the desired and targeted natural appearance can be achieved as a result of the procedure. For this reason, in hair transplantation, the most ideal donor area is generally preferred as the nape area behind the ears.
What if there is no donor area dominance on the scalp?
In some cases, there may not be enough resources on the scalp to support hair transplantation. What are our options in cases where there is no hair follicle to meet the need for transplantation in the nape area?
The FUE technique has been a method that opens the door to the effective use of body hair, apart from the scalp. It has been reported in the literature that the use of body hair in hair transplant surgeries performed before FUE is rare. Although our preference is primarily for the donor area to be the scalp, we also benefit from the support forces for situations where this cannot be achieved and we get successful results. In hair transplant surgery in male patients, we can effectively use beard and body hair not only when the scalp resources are depleted, but also at all stages of the treatment. The use of body hair provides greater coverage in cases of severe alopecia. In young patients with weak donor area dominance on the scalp, this can even turn into an advantage in order to maintain its presence.
Which parts of the body other than the scalp can be selected as a donor area?
Research and experience show that hair follicles that are most similar to the scalp in terms of texture and behavior should be used for hair transplantation. Beard and front body hair are considered as the most suitable donor source, apart from the scalp.
In a published scientific article, the result of a survey on the donor area in hair transplantation is shared as follows.
In the 2020 practice survey conducted among the members of the International Hair Restoration Surgery Association, the cases were;
- Scalp in 92.5%,
- 7.5% of beard hair
- 2.4% of chest hair
- 0.3% belly,
- 0.2% legs and 0.5% other.
In the vast majority of cases, it was determined that the most useful donor areas without scalp were the beard and the second most useful area was the anterior trunk.
The most important reason why the beard area is the most preferred donor area after the nape area in hair transplantation is that the beard hairs have long anagen and short telogen phases. In other words, beard hair roots can stay in the growth phase for a long time like hair. In addition, beard follicles are stronger than other body hairs in terms of growth rate and body thickness. For this reason, if the hair follicles of the beard area are to be preferred for hair transplantation, it should be done to increase the density of the middle and rear areas, not the front line of the hair. It has been experienced that anterior trunk hair is more suitable for hair transplantation on the front hairline and temples.
Donor Field Source OK What is the Planting Field?
Hair transplantation can be done as long as there are sufficient resources in the indicated donor areas. However, the ability of hair transplantation to provide the desired visual results depends on the fertile planting area as well as the donor source. Therefore, if we want the transplanted hair to grow in a healthy way, we need to increase the efficiency of the recipient site. We provide this with FAT hair transplantation. How Does? We take some fat from your body and make it rich in stem cells. We inject stem cell-enriched autologous oils into the scalp before hair transplantation. With the support of autologous oils, we achieve more satisfactory results from hair transplantation with the FUE technique.
