At Hair Turkey, patients sometimes ask us if it is possible to do an interpersonal hair transplant. If this technique may seem the last option for some patients, things are not as simple as they appear.
Some patients suffering from Universalis alopecia wonder if performing a hair transplant using someone else’s hair is possible. People often think it is an ultimate solution for patients who do not have a suitable donor area.
Getting a hair transplant with someone else’s hair is impossible. Discover why and what are the other solutions for patients with Universalis alopecia.
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Interpersonal hair transplant: biological incompatibility
The first reason that makes interpersonal impossible is the lack of biological compatibility and the risk of graft rejects. The standard hair transplant procedure gives good results because it uses the patient’s hair, excluding any graft rejection risk. If the transplant uses someone else’s hair, there are many chances that the immune defenses would gather against the grafts, considering them as foreign bodies, so potential treats for the body.
Like an organ transplant, if a patient would be grafted with someone else’s hair, he should take anti-rejection medicines for the rest of his life. Those medicines weaken the immunity system, which prevents the immune defenses from attacking the grafts, exposing the patient to any disease he passes by.
Regarding those health risks, interpersonal transplants are for vital cases and not cosmetic procedures such as hair transplants.
Universalis alopecia and hair transplant
Interpersonal hair transplant is a discussed matter among patients suffering from Universalis alopecia. This condition involves the loss of all hair and body hair. Most of the time, it is due to an auto-immune disorder: the immune system attacks hair follicles, preventing hair growth. The only way to cure this disorder is to find the cause and treat it, which is complicated because it can be several.
What about alternatives to hair transplants?
Other techniques are available if the patient does not have a suitable donor area for a hair transplant. Interpersonal hair transplant is not possible.
Synthetic hair transplant
Some clinics offer patients who are not suitable for natural hair transplant to do a synthetic hair transplant. Still, this option is risky: the lack of biological compatibility between the plastic material of the grafts and the scalp and the risk of infection is the most common health threat with this technique. The risk of allergy with synthetical hair transplant is so high that FDA banned the method in the USA.
Body Hair Transplant (BHT)
This technique appears as a solution for patients who do not have a suitable donor area. However, this solution is not perfect because the genetic codes which determine hair life cycle length and hair nature differ from hair to body hair. Someone with straight hair often has curly pubic hair, and sometimes even the color varies. Body hair genetic code makes them shorter than hair.
If there is no biological compatibility problem in a body hair transplant, the result is often unnatural because of the differences in genetic codes of hair and body hair.
