Hair Transplant History

A Japanese dermatologist by the name of Dr. Okuda has been credited with first describing the hair transplant technique known as the "punch" technique as early is 1939. He transplanted round skin grafts with hair follicles from permanent hair-bearing areas of the scalp to round openings in scarred areas of the scalps of burn patients' eyebrows and eyelashes. He found that after a while, the grafts would continue to grow hair. Another Japanese dermatologist, Dr. Tamura, used a similar method in 1943 wherein he would gather grafts containing only 1-3 hairs from an elliptical incision taken from the donor area. Dr. Tamura's method is more similar to today's methods.The bold new steps in hair transplantation taken by Okuda and Tamura were outlined in medical journals in Japan, but went unrecognized until 1958 when the work of a New York doctor, Dr. Norman Orentreich, became the basis of today's restoration methods. Orentreich, who, in 1952, performed the first hair transplant for what is today called "male pattern baldness" or "male pattern alopecia" came up with the concept of "donor dominance." Thes concept indicates that the inherent characteristics of individual hair follicles remain with the hair after transplantation. Thus, the permanent hair remains permanent regardless of its location.The methods used by both Okuda and Orentreich continued to be the world's standard for hair restoration for roughly 30 years. In the 1980's improvements emerged in the way of micrografting to increase the more natural look of the frontal hairline. From micrografts came minigrafts (quartered micrografts), from minigrafts came slit minigrafts and with the advent of the multibladed knife (introduced by a man named Vallis), tranplants started to look more and more natural.Professor Dr. Carlos Uebel then came up with the most successful method of micro/minigrafting, which entailed removing a sufficiently large, connected area of skin with hair growing from it from the back of the head. It is then broken down surgically into mini and micrografts and then transplanted. Later, in 1988, Dr. Bob Limmer developed the Follicular Unit method. Limmer noted that regular hair growth occurs in groupings of 1-4 follicles, which he referred to as follicular units. This method has been adopted and popularized by many of today's surgeons and is the most reliable method for natural looking hair restorations.