Hair Loss Sufferers Willing to Admit to Having a Hair Transplant

By Dr. John Frank, M.D. | IAHRS, ABHRS, ISHRS, AHLA, XM Radio: ‘The Bald Truth’, NYC, Sep 30, 2011

For men, hair loss has been associated with a loss of masculinity. Early surgical techniques designed to correct hair loss often produced unnatural results adding to some hair loss sufferer’s embarrassment.

Because of negative social perceptions surrounding hair loss and because of not wanting to draw attention to unnatural hair transplant results, hair loss sufferers, especially men, have been particularly reticent about discussing their hair loss or admitting to having hair loss surgery.

However, all that now seems to be changing.

The ISHRS (The International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery) released a survey this summer on hair loss sufferers attitudes towards hair loss and hair loss treatments and found that a record number of hair loss sufferers are fessing up to having surgical hair restoration.

So, what changed?

Jerry E. Cooley, MD, president of the ISHRS, thinks that because hair loss is such a common condition affecting millions of men and women world wide, people are more comfortable opening up about their hair loss issues.

However, the fact that hair loss affects a large percentage of men and women doesn’t explain the sudden change in attitude.

A more likely explanation is that great advancements in hair transplant technologies, e.g., follicular unit extraction (or FUE), now make it very difficult to tell if someone’s had a hair transplant. It’s possible that once hair loss sufferers have solved their problem, they feel better about themselves and are then more willing to admit they had a problem and more willing to share with others how they successfully reversed their hair loss.

Another factor is that today many celebrities have announced that they’ve undergone hair transplant surgery. This undoubtedly has helped reduced the social stigma around hair loss and hair loss treatment.

Other notable findings from the ISHRS survey were:

Compared to 2008, when the survey began, surgical hair restoration procedures increased worldwide by 11%. This is remarkable given the worldwide collapse of banks and finance that began in late 2008 and is still a drag on most major economies.
Of the estimated 279,381 hair transplant procedures performed worldwide, about 36% (or 101,252) occurred in the United States.
As of 2010, worldwide, most hair transplant patients where men (85.9%) .
However, since 2004, women seeking surgical hair loss treatments increased 24%
Novel uses of hair transplant technologies (e.g., eyelashes, eyebrows and face) increased 14% since 2008. Most of these novel types of hair transplant procedures occurred in the United States.

You can find a full reprint of the report on the ISHRS site.