Causes of hair loss induced by scalp infections.

Fol­li­culi­tis

Fol­li­culi­tis is a term for inflam­ma­tion of hair fol­li­cles. It looks like acne with lit­tle rings of inflam­ma­tion sur­round­ing the open­ing of a hair fol­li­cle. In the early stages of a fol­li­culi­tis, the hair fiber may still be present, but as the fol­li­culi­tis pro­gresses the hair often falls out. There are non-infectious forms of fol­li­culi­tis, such as those caused by oils and greases applied to the skin that clog up the hair fol­li­cles, but fol­li­culi­tis is usu­ally due to a bac­te­r­ial infec­tion. Non­pre­scrip­tion top­i­cal antibi­otics such as bac­i­tracin, myc­i­tracin, or neomycin can be used to treat minor folliculitis

Piedra

Piedra (tri­chomy­co­sis nodu­laris) hap­pens when the hair fibers are infected by a fun­gus. The vis­i­ble indi­ca­tor of a piedra infec­tion is devel­op­ment of hard nod­ules on hair fibers. Indeed, “piedra” is Span­ish for stone. Piedra infec­tion may affect hairs of the scalp, body, and gen­i­tal areas. Usu­ally the infec­tion is rel­a­tively benign. In parts of Malaysia, the nod­ules of black piedra are con­sid­ered attrac­tive and tra­di­tion­ally women encour­aged its growth by sleep­ing with their hair buried in the soil. Treat­ment gen­er­ally involves shav­ing off affected areas. Anti-fungals such as keto­cona­zole or terbinafine are also used.

Demodex fol­licu­lo­rum

Demodex is a lit­tle worm-like crea­ture that likes to live on skin and in hair fol­li­cles. It feeds on dead skin and oils, so it par­tic­u­larly likes to live in hair fol­li­cles where there are lots of both.

Humans are born free of Demodex, but dur­ing child­hood, through con­tact with oth­ers, the skin can become infected with it. For the most part, we never know they are there. They are benign, if repul­sive, lit­tle crea­tures. The most com­mon prob­lem with Demodex is that they may cause irri­ta­tion, par­tic­u­larly in the eye­lashes. If you have itchy eye­lashes, Demodex may be the problem.

Using stereo­scopic micro­scopes is a very sophis­ti­cated sur­gi­cal tech­nique that improves nat­u­ral­ness of your new hairline.

Stereo­scopic dis­sect­ing is the method we use at Bev­erly Hills Hair Restora­tion to dis­sect the fol­li­cle units. It is the most refined and ulti­mate form of hair trans­plan­ta­tion. What the process involves is tak­ing hair roots from the donor area in the back of the scalp, where the hair gen­er­ally con­tin­ues to grow through­out a life­time. After that process is over, with the aid of stereo­scopic dis­sect­ing micro­scopes, the strip is then divided into the indi­vid­ual fol­lic­u­lar unit grafts each mea­sur­ing approx 1mm in width. By using micro­scopes about 30% more hair is visu­al­ized and can be har­vested than with the older tech­niques. A part of the process is to trim away the excess fatty tis­sue sur­round­ing each fol­li­cle. This is a crit­i­cal sur­gi­cal step for two rea­sons. One, each fol­lic­u­lar unit must fit into the very small inci­sion that forms the foun­da­tion of the new hair­line. Two, trim­ming this tis­sue elim­i­nates the occur­rence of the unnat­ural gaps between each group­ing of trans­planted hair. Using this tech­nique con­tributes to the rea­son why our patients results appear so natural.

Aes­thetic tal­ent is vital in a hair trans­plant sur­geon. It is impor­tant to under­stand the con­cept of design and how best to make the hair­line (the frontal line on the upper fore­head) as nat­ural as pos­si­ble. A truly well designed, aes­thetic hair­line is cre­ated with one fol­lic­u­lar graft at a time on the hair­line. This area of the head is called the “hair­line zone” and it cov­ers about 1.5 cm at the front, it is the most appar­ent part of the head thus mak­ing it the most impor­tant to appear nat­ural. The grafts that are being place as the front hair line are stag­gered in a pat­tern that will appear com­pletely nat­ural as it grows.  The hair is placed with spe­cial atten­tion and detail as well; this is done so that when the hair grows it will lay in such a man­ner that it flows smoothly along this line.