BHT (Body Hair Transplantation)

BHT (Body Hair Transplantation) involves follicular unit extraction, known as FUE, from body areas with strong and thick hair. It is an alternative for patients with poor coverage in the occipital donor region.

The BHT technique should only be performed by expert surgeons, given that the technical characteristics of FUE from certain body areas such as the beard, chest, abdomen o pubic region requires certain conditions.

Body skin has higher mobility than on the scalp, therefore, extraction of follicular units with a low transection range is technically demanding.

Detection of anagen stage hair for BHT (Body Hair Transplantation)

In patients with extensive androgenic alopecia (Norwood Scale V and VI), it is common for the donor area to not have sufficient quantity of hair to acceptably cover the whole region affected by alopecia.

In these patients, body hair is being used more frequently. this hair is usually strong and generally more abundant. The use of body hair transplanted to the scalp is known as BHT (Body Hair Transplantation).

For BHT to be performed, certain important conditions should be met:

• A major part of the follicular units on the body have only one hair.
• A major part of the body hair follicles are in the telogen or resting stage. This percentage, according to body areas, can be 40-70% of the total amount of hair.

The telogen stage is the hair's resting period, the dermal papillae is in a state of repose and it is easier to damage it during hair extraction with the punch. To prevent this, graft extraction should only be performed on follicles in the anagen stage, where the structure is easier to detect.

Hair in the anagen stage is active and the shaft is going through rapid growth. Therefore, if the donor site is shaved, the active hair follicles will be visible and a few days after shaving, the hair will re-sprout from each of these. A opposed to hair in the anagen stage, telogen hair does not sprout. It is therefore easy to extract only the hair follicles that grow and are in the anagen stage using the FUE technique.

For this reason, when we perform BHT, the patient must have the donor site shaved 3-4 days before the hair extraction for the transplant is carried out.

For more information on the BHT technique for hair transplants, request a free informative consultation now with one of our expert surgeons.