1. The First Blush of Hair Growth
In the early 1950s, New York dermatologist Dr. Norman Orentreich was transferring skin grafts on a burn victim's scalp. He grafted growing hair follicles to a bald, damaged scalp. Later he discovered the hair kept growing. Little did he, or anyone else for that matter, know that during World War II two doctors in Japan had already successfully discovered that transplanted hair follicles kept growing healthy hair. Still no one in the medical community believed Orentreich when he first published and tried to tell the world about his discovery. Not until 1959 was his experiment finally accepted and his paper published.
2. Doctors Flocked to Orentreich's Door
Doctors now were fascinated and wanted to learn this new technique of hair restoration. They flocked to meet and learn from Orentreich not only for future patients, but to put hair back on their own heads. Therefore, Dr. Orentreich, the new expert, demonstrated his new technique, and his word was authority. No one changed, questioned or tried to improve the technique he presented for years to come.
3. Tufts of Hair as Islands in a Sea of Baldness
These early hair transplant doctors were excited that transplanted hair actually grew. They were pleased that they could cover large balding or thinning areas of the scalp with growing hair. However, the early doctors transplanted the hair with 4-mm grafts, large grafts, because they felt this was the only way the hair would keep growing. These transplants had a doll's hair-plug look. Especially when the "plugs" were in thinning hair areas. As soon as the thinning hair finally fell out, all that was left was the 4-mm size grafts; it did not look very good.
4. Complicated by Repair Work
Obvious plugs created the need for patients to return again and again to the hair surgeon for more plugs and improvements to the original transplant. This became very expensive and inconvenient. Even so, the new transplant work only looked good for a while, as balding and thinning progressed.
5. Modern Answer to Hair Plugs
Not until the early 1980s did improvements to the plug arrive. This is after years of hair transplants having a bad reputation and bad name, and making it the brunt of many hair plug jokes, which you still hear today. Smaller grafts began, and then finally a doctor used a high-powered microscope and discovered that hair follicles clustered and grew in 1 to 4 sometimes up to 7 hairs. These follicles grew in groups as a unit. By transplanting follicular unit grafts, hair transplants today have an almost undetectable and natural look.
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