Robbie Williams has opened up going bald and his struggles to replenish his hair.
The former Take That star has been thinning on top for the last 10 years.
In that time, the 48-year-old singer has used various methods to restore his locks.
He kicked off with a hair transplant nine years ago. This worked well to fill in the star’s bald patches but unfortunately hair loss is a continual process so while the transplanted hair should last Robbie for the rest of his life, he continued to lose more his natural hair.
Robbie would almost certainly have had a FUE (follicular unit extraction) transplant – the more modern method chosen by most celebrities and around 80% of Dr Asim Shahmalak’s patients at Crown Clinic.
With FUE, the donor hair is harvested from the back and sides of the scalp and replanted in the balding areas.
Scarring is minimal – patients are left with red pin pricks where the donor hair is taken out and replanted but these tend to heal after two weeks.
Celebrity clients at Crown Clinic who have had FUE include Coronation Street star Jack P Shepherd and the model Calum Best.
At Crown Clinic, we also do the more traditional method of hair transplantation – FUT (follicular unit transplantation).
The difference with FUE is that the surgeon obtains the donor hair all in one go with FUT – cutting a strip of skin from the scalp. Technicians then extra the donor grafts from the strip which are then skilfully replanted in the scalp by Dr Shahmalak.
Dr Shahmalak has performed two FUT transplants on the TV doctor, Christian Jessen.
Robbie spoke about having a second hair transplant in 2020, saying that he was going to “thatch” it.
He moaned: “Man is going thin on top.”
But Robbie had left it too late for a second transplant because he did not have enough donor hair to fill in the gaps.
He subsequently tried some expensive follicle growth injections which failed to make a big difference.
He is planning to wear a wig to cover up his baldness on his next tour.
The lesson from Robbie’s experience is not to leave it too late to seek a hair transplant.
Our surgeon Asim Shahmalak can work wonders but he needs a good covering of donor hair to make a transplant work well. If a patient has lost too much of their natural hair there is a limit to what even the most skilled surgeon can do to repair the damage.