Like many members of this patient based community, I have been a BHT - Body Hair Transplant (transferring body hair follicles to the balding areas of the scalp) skeptic, largely due to this procedure being over sold and over priced by clinics other than Dr. Umar.

However, I have a newfound respect for Dr. Umar after having observed him perform surgery, viewed photos of his final result and learned about his dedication to personally doing such tedious FUE/BHT work at very modest prices. I now think he provides a very valuable service in particular to patients whose standard donor area has been depleted.

I was also impressed by the BHT/FUE presentation he gave to his colleagues at the last ISHRS annual scientific meeting. He presented BHT results without over selling their benefits, while pointing out their limitations.

With his background in cosmetic surgery and dermatology, Dr. Umar is uniquely qualified to perform hair restoration surgery. He is a true pioneer in developing an effective process for transferring body hair to the head with minimal scaring.

Part of Dr. Umar’s passion for developing an alternative hair transplant process stems from a botched 400 graft strip session he personally endured years ago. His personal dedication has helped motivate him to do the extremely tedious work of extracting and placing all the grafts himself at very modest prices, while enduring unfair criticism from some of his BHT competitors.

Dr. Umar has been perfecting his FUE and BHT procedures since 2005 and has performed over 150 BHT cases to date.

Since recently meeting with Dr. Umar at his Redondo Beach office, I invited him to share more of his work on our discussion forum community. Some of his impressive restorations can be viewed by visiting:

10,000 Graft BHT case at http://hair-restoration-info.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/746...311069083#9311069083

3,000 FUE and Body Hair Grafts - http://hair-restoration-info.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7466060861/m/3091080183


I enjoyed watching him perform surgery during my visit. It was very evident that Dr. Umar has developed a high level of skill in extracting and placing grafts and has a very smooth touch. He typically extracts the grafts by first scoring the skin surface with a punch that is 0.9mm or less in size. He then uses a needle to separate the base of the follicles from the surrounding tissues. This process minimizes the transection that might result if he simply attempted to excise the follicle by extending the punch down to the base of the follicle.

He then places the follicular unit grafts into lateral incisions that he creates using tiny custom cut blades. He likes to combine body hairs with scalp hairs, with the body hair acting as filler hair.

In his experience body hair tends to grow longer when on the scalp, but maintains the same hair characteristics that it had when on the body. Body hair also has a much longer dormant/resting phase, so more body hair is required to provide the same amount of coverage as normal scalp hair, which is only in the telogen dormant phase about five percent of the time.

I look forward to having Dr. Umar continue to share his life changing results with this community.

Below are photos of the surgery I observed during my recent visit.

The patient I observed had a 1800 graft strip surgery with Bosley two years prior. He wanted his hairline refined, his strip scar grafted with beard hair and density added to the overall balding area.

Dr. Umar used beard and head hair do his work. The patient received close to 3000 grafts total.

BHT has always been very fascinating to me, especially since I happen to be somehow closely related to the hairy backed gorilla .

Between chest, stomach, and leg hair, I have enough to fill my entire scalp. But like you Pat, I've been a skeptic for some time wanting to see consistency in results.

I have always felt that a certain level of skepticism while keeping an open mind is highly important, especially regarding hair transplantation. Just a short time ago, it was believed that nobody could perform sessions of over 1500 follicular unit grafts in a single session without splitting grafts. Now, it is commonplace to exceed 2500 follicular unit grafts in the hands of those who continue to advance and adapt to the latest techniques.

It's nice to see a surgeon such as Dr. Umar continue to work with BHT while recognizing and admiting its benefits and limitations without the hype and for a moderate fee.

I also like the idea of using body hair as "filler" hair since it is mostly donor dominant and remains in catagen (resting) longer than scalp hairs, thus never growing as long as scalp hairs.

I've been impressed with the results I've seen so far given each patient's individual circumstances. I look forward to seeing more BHT/FUE combination results from Dr. Umar on our forum community in the near future.

Best wishes,

Falc