Unnatural hairlines and cornrow hair transplants
Dr Rogers Hair transplant complaint reviews no# 4
Many artistic and technique related factors come together to make a natural hair transplant.
But firstly, you have to know what a natural hairline actually looks like and it’s a source of frequent surprise to Doctor Rogers, that so few people (both patients and doctors alike) recognise the correct characteristics. In synopsis:
Hairline shape
Natural hair line shapes vary a lot, not just stereotypical male and female but also the actual line can have dips and projections, cow licks and widows peak irregularities. Helpful ideas include the snail track design which is a random line weaving in and out of the basic hair line design.
What isn’t natural includes very acute angles, temple lines that curve down in a simian way and the most obvious – just following a straight line without stepping the grafts forward and backwards at all. What Dr Rogers call the Action Man (GI Joe) look.
Hairline density
Along with variation of the actual line, the density needs to change – a natural hair line has fine wispy single hairs grading into stronger hairs and this can be mimicked by using single hair grafts in the first few rows then using2/3 hair grafts behind them.
But even then, the distance between each graft can be varied so that they don’t look like uniform “teeth in a comb” of perfect spacing. Two single hairs could be close together and a deliberate space left to break up the appearance of uniformity.
Density Variation
Natural hairlines are not evenly dense and in particular, the centre is normally thicker looking (due to angulation of the hair further back producing a shingling effect). This means that temples (even without hair loss) tend to be less dense than the centre.
Interestingly, studies have shown that when looking at a face, people look first at the nose, the eyes, flick up to the central forehead and then back down. Temple thinning/recession is barely registered – what matters most is whether someone has hair centrally, not temple receding.
Patterning
This goes with the cornrow transplant that looks so awful but is so prevalent.
Highest densities can only be achieved by regular patterning that is close together but this can appear unnatural so has to be placed behind the irregular hairline (as above).
Additionally though, the highest density is by interdigitation of the slits (like pushing two combs together), not by two lines spaced apart – corn rows or plowed field furrows.
Dr Rogers has seen a lot of this recently – technically very competent mega sessions completely let down by the corn row spacing of the grafts.