Hair Loss Treatment: Medication or Transplant?

If your hair has started to thin and you're afraid that you could be headed for significant hair loss, there are a number of treatments available to you but the secret is in knowing which ones are worth your while.

A hair transplant springs to mind for a lot of people and has been a popular choice for older celebrities including John Cleese and Francis Rossi - interestingly both largely thought of as having thinning hair.

They, and a lot of other men, may have tried hair supplements and herbal remedies before resorting to transplants, but very often medical hair loss treatments can provide a much better and more effective alternative. Francis Rossi's missing ponytail confirms just how ineffective hair transplants can sometimes be long-term, especially if the proper after-care is not followed on an on-going basis.

A hair transplant is usually a four-to-six hour procedure that costs from around £6,000 a session (they tend to be priced per graft so the more extensive the area to be filled in, the more expensive it gets...). The final results tend to become noticeable around 12 months after the operation, however, sometimes two or three procedures may be necessary in order for patients to get the look they want.

What is less known is that hair loss may still occur after a hair transplant; this can present in the susceptible areas surrounding the grafts if precautions, in the form of hair loss treatments, are not taken.

There are two medications proven to prevent and reverse hair loss - finasteride 1mg and minoxidil - which are widely established, not to mention MHRA licensed and FDA approved, for the treatment of Male Pattern Hair Loss.

Faulty Tower's icon John Cleese admitted to a hair transplant: "Because I have got a very strange shaped head. It's very pointy. And I don't like wearing wigs."

Similarly, Status Quo's Francis Rossi was initially happy with his hair transplant but the 59-year-old eventually said farewell to his trademark ponytail because there wasn’t enough pony to form a decent tail. It was at the age of 49 that the rocker said he noticed his hair was thinning and decided to do something about it.

"I never worried that I was becoming thin on top, but pictures of me tended to let the band down," Rossi said.

Rossi splashed out on a hair transplant at a Harley Street clinic where surgeons took hairs from the back of his head and replanted them in areas where he was going bald.

"I am a founder member of the 'No Way Toupee Club', so it had to be a transplant," Rossi said after the surgery. "It was quite painless and I am happy with the result."

A decade later however and the showman says he couldn't avoid male pattern baldness with a transplant.

"In the past few years my hair has got so thin that there’s not enough to work into a decent ponytail," he said. "So I decided to forget about clinging to my youth and that it was time to grow old gracefully."

A hair transplant is an extreme measure of uprooting still active hair follicles and transplanting them to the areas of the scalp which need a bit of attention but there are still areas of hair that are susceptible to hair loss around the area of transplanted hair, so over time these hairs will continue to thin. Hair loss medications work to stimulate the withering hair follicles and generate new hair growth as long as you use them.

Not only do hair loss medications prevent further hair loss and generate new hair growth but the results are maintained. Unfortunately Rossi and so many other hair loss sufferers don't know that there are hair loss products that work. Many herbal and cosmetic products, such as Nourkrin, Provillus or Toppik, are often inferred as solutions to hair loss when in fact they are not conclusively proven to treat hair loss at all. The only treatments that have been extensively proven to stabilise and reverse the effects of hair loss, are those licensed by the MHRA (UK) and approved by the FDA (US).