Common male pattern baldness accounts for more than 95% of hair loss in men. Two-thirds of men will experience some kind of hair loss by the age of 35. When 50 comes around, approximately 85% of men have experienced significant thinning. Hair loss can commonly occur in women as well. Thanks to the development of cosmetic procedures, men and women can now turn to surgery for hair transplantation. What exactly is a DHI transplant, how does it work and who is qualified to undergo the procedure? Read all about it in this article!
DHI = Direct Hair Implantation
Hair transplant is a cosmetic surgery where the surgeon removes hair follicles from the donor site and implants it to the recipient site. A relatively recent technique of this cosmetic surgery is DHI. Direct hair implantation (DHI) is a cosmetic surgery where one extracts hair follicles from the donor area through the usage of a micro motor and then transplanting these follicles in the receipt site by using an implanter tool that contains a hollow needle.
The hair follicles are extracted one by one using a tool with a very small diameter. These follicles are then directly implanted into the receipt site using a pen-like device. This procedure has many advantages over the FUE procedure, which is an alternative to DHI.
Advantages of Direct Hair Implantation
DHI cosmetic surgery has its advantages over FUE cosmetic surgery.
- Since prior opening in the receipt area is not necessary, the grafts remain outside the body for a lesser period of time, thus ensuring strong and healthy placement of the grafts for a better result.
- DHI reduces bleeding during the creation of the recipient area since the prior opening isn’t necessary. The blood supply in the implanted area is therefore damaged less.
- Higher hair follicles survival rate.
- The receipt site does not have to be shaved, hence the patient can achieve the quickest results possible. With FUE, one generally has to wait 12 months before enjoying full hair regrowth.
- The patient experiences faster recovery after cosmetic surgery, hence the patient can enjoy their normal routine faster.
- Consistent results. As a modernized and well-developed technique, the DHI implanter controls the angle, depth, and trend of the planted hair follicles. Hereby, the surgeon can ensure that the newly implanted hairs grow just like your natural hair.
Disadvantages of Direct Hair Implantation
Naturally, cosmetic surgery can have pros and cons. Since there are alternative operations one can undergo for a hair transplant, here are the disadvantages in comparison to the classic FUE method.
- DHI is on average a more costly procedure, which makes the operation interesting for a niche.
- The surgeons are exposed to long-term training to enable themselves to master this technique.
- DHI requires more attention and enhanced accuracy during the procedure. It is a slow process and can take up days in comparison to alternatives. Surgeons often grant the patients the option to split the surgery into manageable sessions, usually over 2-3 days.
Who is qualified to undergo DHI?
With the creation of the DHI method, specialists researched who would be perfectly qualified to undergo the DHI treatment. As they gained in-depth knowledge regarding this new technique, researchers identified that not all people were qualified to undergo this surgery.
In the initial version of the procedure, it was concluded that Asian patients experienced far better results compared to other ethnicities. Asian people’s hair, in general, is thick and straight. Curly characteristics and thinner diameters of other ethnicities make it difficult to be loaded properly into the implantation device and to place in the scalp since the primary sizes of the needles that experts were using in the early stages varied between 0.8-0.9 mm.
As a result, this then would lead to an inappropriate bend in one’s follicle, incorrect placement of the graft, and too much trauma for the follicles that can hurt the survival rates. Some researched proposed different findings, suggesting that with proper training and experience with the implantation device, a surgeon could treat all ethnicities.
Thanks to technical and scientific development, hair transplantation surgery has tremendously improved over the past years. It has now reached a point where DHI surgery can be utilized for any kind of hair. If you’re interested in seeing before-and-after photos of people who’ve undergone surgery, click here!
