March 19 2010, 3:32 pm PT | Posted in: Hair Transplantation + Hairlines + Photos
Hi Doctor Rassman. I had a hair transplant a few years back by a very respectable doctor, and while I’m generally quite pleased with the results, my hairline is a bit asymmetrical. How normal is it for a natural hairline to be higher on one side?
Thanks!
In nature, the hairlines of non-balding males are usually symmetrical, but occasionally they are not. I do not have statistics on this. In the balding hairline that is receding, it is common for one side to recede higher and faster than the other side.
I have, even under the best of conditions, noticed the hairline slightly off balance after the transplant. I routinely draw the hairline and then have the patient (and if he’d like, his family and my surgical staff) provide input and between all of us, we usually hit it correctly. Just this week, I saw a patient who had the hairline higher by 1/8th inch on one side. Here’s his photos — click to enlarge:
Before (left) / After (right):
The after photo is 8 months since I did a single surgery of 2328 grafts. Upon seeing the slight unevenness, I offered to fix it the following day at no charge. He was visiting California from across the country and I wanted to address it before he went home. It took 249 grafts on the one side to balance it out. I won’t have photos of the final hairline for a while since the procedure was just done, but here is the area I’m talking about:





I am not a psychic and I cannot predict the future. If I could, I’d be 100% correct with my Oscar picks. Alas, I was not.
The author of that article concludes the piece by saying, “From a medical point of view, there is no need to treat male pattern baldness. At best, the treatments are expensive and only partially effective.”
I would want to know if you are using a tight hat or if you have done anything different during this time period that might cause the hair loss you see. Normally, humans have asynchronous hair cycling, which means that we lose on average 100 hairs per day and regrow the same numbers of hairs. In a 3 1/2 year hair cycle, the entire 100,000 hairs will replace themselves.
You’d have to take measurements and compare them over time to see if the hairline is receding, but having an asymmetrical hairline isn’t unusual and doesn’t necessarily mean you’re losing your hair.










