Jurgen Klopp – Spreading a Positive Hair Transplant Message
Stars of the world of football have inspired thousands of men to seek hair transplants.
It all started with Wayne Rooney seven years ago when he went public with his FUE (follicular unit transplantation) procedure from a London clinic.
Since then, lots more soccer stars have had treatments including the former German international Didi Hamann who had an FUE procedure with Crown Clinic’s consultant surgeon Asim Shahmalak three years ago.
Another high profile German soccer star to have a hair transplant is the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp.
Happily, Klopp has freely admitted to having help with his hair – sending out a really positive message to men struggling to cope with the psychological fall-out caused by male pattern baldness.
Klopp, 51, said: “Yes it’s true. I think the results are really cool, don’t you?”
More than half of men of Klopp’s age have experienced some kind of hair loss, and this is likely to accelerate as they get older.
Most football stars opt for the more modern hair transplant procedure, FUE. Around 80% of Crown Clinic patients choose FUE.
The reason FUE has taken over from the more traditional method of hair transplantation, FUT (follicular unit transplantation), over the last five years is because there is less obvious scarring.
Patients are left with a few red pin pricks in the donor area and the balding area where the hair is transplanted – but these go away after a few weeks.
With FUT, also called strip surgery, the patient has a noticeable lined scar where the strip of skin is removed to obtain the donor hair. This scar is not noticeable if you like to wear your hair relatively long like Jurgen Klopp but it would be easily seen on the scalp of a man who wears his hair shorter such as Wayne Rooney.
Other FUE patients at Crown Clinic in the last five years include the Homes Under the Hammer presenter Martin Roberts and the Gogglebox star Chris Butland-Steed. TV doctor Christian Jessen has had two FUT transplants with Dr Shahmalak. The scars from where the strips were removed from Dr Jessen to obtain the donor hair are not really visible because he likes to wear his hair relatively long, and his hair covers up the scarring.
Some FUE patients are concerned that the surgeon needs to shave their head to obtain the donor grafts. While this is true, the surgeon doesn’t need to shave ALL of the patient’s hair off. Dr Shahmalak has developed a technique which allows FUE patients to avoid having most of their scalp shaved. If the patient requests, he will only shave the area where the donor grafts are extracted. So a rectangular patch is shaved. If the patient wears their hair longer, this patch will have longer hair growing above it which can be styled to cover the shaved rectangular patch where the grafts are extracted. There is a section on the Crown Clinic website which explains this technique in more detail.