Dear Dana- I see a number of female patients who are told by other surgeons the same that you have been told- that your donor area is too thin- and that do in fact benefit from a well performed hair transplant by someone like myself who has extensive experience in treating women (on average 4 procedures on women a week).
The key thing is providing you with realistic expectations. It would be possible to restore some density in one procedure to one of the two main areas of thinning in your case- one being the crown, the other being the upper entradas/entrances and midscalp region. I would anticipate that with a procedure of 1600 or so grafts, I could somewhat fill in and definitely improve the thinning of the entradas and midscalp region, not to where you would no longer be able to see your scalp, but to where it would be moderately fuller and the scalp would be less visible. This would be the same situation if the crown area would be filled in, but in general the results with hair transplants of the crown are not as impressive as they are with the frontal part of the scalp.
To help get the very best results, at the time of your procedure, I would perform Growth Factors which you can read about in the attachment, which helps the success of the transplant.
Another nonsurgical option Dana is to simply perform growth factors as a stand-alone treatment, and recommend that you use Laser Light Therapy and see how you do over the next 6 to 8 months, then consider at that time performing a hair transplant if a good result is achieved from the growth factors and LLT.
I welcome your questions.
Posted by Jeffrey S. Epstein, MD, FACS