The body hair transplant is the procedure in which body hairs are taken from the abundant donor hair present on beard, chest etc for transplant to the scalp. This is done by scarless FUE technique as day care procedure .There is about 1 million hairs present on the body. Person having high grade of baldness such as class 7 may not have enough donor hairs at the back and side of the scalp (only 12500 hairs out of permanent 25000 may be transplanted). So the BHT is the only option for hair restoration for such cases. Now with the advancement in technique and better tools, the follicular unit extraction method can utilize the body hairs as a donor site for transplant to scalp area.
The best candidates for BHT procedure are the patients with abundant hair in such regions as chin, chest, back or legs
- Beard
- Chest
- Legs
- Pubic areas
- Under arms (axilla)
- Back
- Grade 7 baldness when limited scalp donor are available
- When enough scalp donor hair are not available due to previous procedure
- 5 DHT resistant of body hairs
- Coverage of crown region by adding density to the existing sparse hairs
- Large availability of donor area
- FUT scar repair
- Can be done for Eyebrow transplant
- Can be used in combination with FUE hair transplant to add density
- Slightly different nature of the hair than the ones growing on the scalp
- The necessity to anesthetize the extensive donor area
- Long and tedious procedure due to different exit angle of hair .the body hairs are placed in bulky soft tissue without any bony support as compared to scalp hairs therefore take more time to extract
- Body hairs are thin and mostly single hair grafts , also take more time to grow
- Slow procedure and very taxing for surgeon not only due to awkward positioning but also this is due to acute angulations of more superficially placed follicles. The follicles are often in the more bulky soft tissue with less bony support. Some of the Body Hairs are not strong shafted to facilitate easy extraction.
- Hypopigmentation or hyperpigmentation at the donor site
- Less yield in terms of number of hairs
- Body hair often has a much lower diameter than the hair on your head. Body hairs often grow alone, so this generally means single hair grafts. Body hair takes longer to grow.
- Although body hair tends to grow a little when implanted in the scalp, it will never achieve the length of a normal hair.