These Doctors Are Making Hair Transplants More Accessible for Black Patients
“Traction alopecia, which is the kind where you lose the frontal line — that exists in one out of three adult Black women,” says Meena Singh, MD, a board-certified dermatologist based in Kansas City, Kansas.
For Dr. Singh, who chose to go into dermatology because of the scarcity of Black people in the specialty (only about 3 percent of dermatologists in the United States are Black), she believes representation is pertinent to the care one receives.
“It is a field where your skin color and ethnicity actually does matter,” she says. “If you have skin of color or if you are of African descent, you may manifest different conditions. We might have to treat you completely differently, and if we treat you with the wrong therapies, then we can actually do harm.”
According to Christian Bisanga, MD, a Belgium-based leading specialist in treating hair loss and hair transplant surgery, only a small proportion of doctors can perform Afro-textured hair transplants like Dr. Singh and Dr. Osei-Tutu. In fact, he estimates that there are fewer than 50 dermatologists throughout the world who can conduct an Afro-textured hair transplant “to the highest standard.” Dr. Bisanga says there are aesthetic differences in head shape and hairline design between people with African ancestry and those with European and Asian ancestry. People with Afro-textured hair also tend to have more tightly curled and thicker hair, and without a firm grasp of this, it may affect the transplant in terms of how follicles are transferred and, when done incorrectly, increase the possibility of a hyperpigmentation reaction.
Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dr. Bisanga completed his medical studies in Belgium but his interest in hair loss began when he lived in Atlanta, Georgia during his postgraduate studies.
“It was really an eye opener because I saw a lot of tragedy just because of usage of relaxers. And so all that kind of forged my interest in trying to understand exactly what was at stake,” he says. “On a personal level, there is a lot of shame involved so people don’t just go out and start talking about the hair loss. Especially with all the weave[s] and all the extensions and everything else, you know, the wigs that people can put and hide what’s happening underneath.”
How Hair Transplants Work
According to Dr. Bisanga, there are two main techniques used in hair transplants on highly textured hair: the strip technique and the follicular unit extraction. In the former, the dermatologist dissects follicles under a microscope after taking them from the skin in the back of the head. In the latter, the dermatologist takes hairs one by one from what is called the donor site and moves it to the recipient site. Dr. Bisanga is especially keen on the latter because it does not have the potential to leave scars. But not everyone who suffers from hair loss is a candidate for these procedures.
