Men's Health

Wayne Rooney got a hair transplant in London last week - but we've been to Beverly Hills where a radical technique would have given Wayne lustrous locks overnight.

By Nick Bradshaw

Hotel staff in Beverly Hills rarely bat an eyelid when people check out bearing little resemblance to those who checked in. There are no double takes, despite the double identities. The reason, of course, is that as well as being home to many of LA's rich and famous, Beverly Hills is also home to some of the world's most exclusive plastic surgeons.

Few people look old as they parade down Rodeo Drive. Instead, they look, eh, altered. Normal, in the sense of God-given imperfection, is by no means the norm, whereas the grotesque has become the acceptable. Facial bruising and dressings are status symbols rather than signs of an unlucky encounter with a bar stool.

There are two established Beverly Hills plastic surgeons, however, who aim not to alter but to restore. Their mission is to restore the hairline of the bald and, in doing so, restore their patient's confidence. Together they have perfected the winningly named Fleming/Mayer Flap, the most radical treatment for male pattern baldness currently in existence and a procedure that is guaranteed to give bald men thick, lustrous, healthy hair.

Image is important the world over, of course. Wayne Rooney's decision to go to the Harley Street Clinic in London for hair grafts demonstrates that. But we're in Beverly Hills where it's integral. We're surrounded by people who flock to this area in order to be seen and to make a name for themselves. People come here to be filmed and photographed, so it's only natural that appearance counts.

So says The Beverly Hills Institute's Richard Fleming MD, one half of the double act performing a revolutionary procedure that involves a frightening combination of stretching, stapling, stitching, and scalping. The result, however, is anything but frightening.

Where Wayne will have to wait for several months for his newly transplanted hair follicles to take root, Dr Fleming's patients walk in to his clinic bald, and walk out with a full head of hair.

Natural

"It's better to be bald and natural than to simply look unnatural, says the naturally hairless Dr. Fleming. "Looking natural is the key to everything we do here, from rhinoplasty (nose jobs to you and me) to facelifts to baldness treatments. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to look natural. If it doesn't look natural then the results are devastating to the patient.

"Sadly, I can't tell you the number of times over the last 30 years I've said 'no' or 'let's wait and see' to people, only to have them come back and see me a while later, having done something elsewhere that's had crippling results."

Baldness is a serious matter for Fleming. He recounts the significance of work by Dr. Thomas Cash, a psychology professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia, who carried out an extensive study in 1988, comparing human reactions to both bald men and men with a full head of hair.

Smile (if your face isn't botoxed), you're in sunny Beverly Hills!

He found conclusively that pictures of bald men were not as well received by indiscriminative viewers. They were also far more frequently picked out to be likely criminals. The bald were not seen as the beautiful, but rather the less successful, the less intelligent - the problem people.

"We all know that what makes a man boils down to a lot more than how much hair he has on his head," says Fleming, "but the results of Dr. Cash's test were conclusive. Appearance does count. Unfairly, baldness does make a difference."
Dr. Fleming wears a surgical bandanna and scrubs as he prepares for his 6.15am operation, the first of many in a long day (between 12 and 40 Fleming/Mayer Flap ops alone are performed a month).

Under the bandanna, there's proof that he is an expert baldie as well as an expert surgeon. However, his hair-loss pattern (he sports only a narrow rim of hair on the back and sides of his head) makes him unsuitable for his own procedure.

"Make no mistake, if I were suitable I'd have it done like a shot. No hesitation at all,"he insists. "You hear 'bald is beautiful',but if you surveyed all bald men and gave them a choice, then you'd see that this is fantasy. If a pill were available that would give men with hair loss a full mane, you'd be hard pressed to find a man who wouldn't take it. Given the choice, I think most people would."

Right now, there's no shortage of follically challenged men queuing up for Fleming's services. The real genius behind his and partner Dr. Toby Mayer's procedures lies in its devastating simplicity and efficacy. In basic terms - and let us ignore the finer nuances of skilled surgery for just a moment here - it involves removing a patch of bald (or balding) scalp from the top of a patient's head and replacing it with a flap of scalp bearing healthy, long-lasting hair taken from the side of the head.

This flap is flipped through 90 degrees and sewn across the head, providing a permanent, natural-looking, new hairline. Large amounts of hair, equivalent to approximately 10,000 mini/micrografts are transferred in one go.

His hair is tied into tiny bunches lending him the slightly disturbing appearance of Björk morphed with the Elephant Man.

The relative simplicity of the method does not mean that it's undertaken without caution, however. "One has to be careful when recommending treatment - or for that matter, advising against it - because baldness is progressive,"explains Dr. Fleming.

"Just because somebody looks like they're a good candidate when they're 20 doesn't mean they'll still be a good candidate when they're 40 or 50. It's about the supply and demand of hair follicles. If you have the surgery when you're young but unsuitable, you'll end up with horrendous results in years to come. You'll be left with an oasis in the desert - a clump of hair with baldness all around it. If you don't have adequate donor hair, you're not a good candidate for surgery. If that's the case, I won't operate."

Two weeks ago, 23-year-old James from Chicago had the area of scalp destined to be used to form his flap separated from the surrounding skin on the side of his head. Dr. Fleming marked the outline of the flap and, under local anesthetic, incisions were made along both edges. Having completed this first procedure, the incisions were immediately closed and a dressing was applied.

The next morning the dressing was removed and James was able to return to his regular daily routine without arousing suspicion. A week later, further incisions were made around the tail end of the flap. Again, the edges of the incisions were sewn back together and James wore a dressing overnight.

Up until this point, not one hair had been moved and nobody in the outside world would have had the slightest notion that James had undergone surgery. That is. providing that no one had spotted the rapidly growing lump on the side of his head. This is the result of a regular insertion of sterile water into a balloon, or 'expander', inserted under the skin some weeks before in order to stretch the scalp, thereby creating a larger donor area to work with. "We're using the expanders a lot more than we used to because I feel that gives us a better result," explains Dr. Fleming.

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