FIVE ways to banish baldness

INDIVIDUAL HAIR TRANSPLANT

Graham Satchwell, 65, a former policeman, lives near Stockbridge, Hampshire, with his wife. He started losing hair in his early 20s.

My hairline started receding in my 20s. By 50, I had no hair on the front or top of my head. Blokes aren’t meant to worry about this, but I don’t think anyone thinks a bald guy is more attractive than one with hair. It affected the way I felt about myself.

For years I dismissed the idea of a hair transplant as they looked so unnatural. Then I met a former colleague who’d had a convincing looking transplant and saw his surgeon, Dr Raghu Reddy at The Private Clinic in London.

He uses Follicular Unit Extraction — where individual hairs are removed and implanted.

Dr Reddy gave me the option of a thicker section just at the front or filling the whole area so it looked as if I was thinning a bit on top. I went for the second, which cost £15,000.

I had the procedure under local anaesthetic. First, my head was shaved so they could see what they were doing. Using a tiny surgical tool, each hair — 6,000 in all — was extracted from the back and sides of my head, then placed in a petri dish and reimplanted the next day.

After three months I could already see a decent amount of the hair growing — it took a year for the final results and, while it’s not thick, it looks natural and so much better than before.

Expert view: Though hair transplants don’t give you more hair overall — you’re simply moving the existing hair from a less visible place to a more visible one — and can be very expensive, they’re the only treatment that will produce a substantial increase in hair coverage on a balding scalp.

With a skilled surgeon, the results can be indistinguishable from natural hair. You need enough hair to harvest, and because in women pattern baldness is less predictable, fewer women are suitable.