wayne rooney shows off hair transplant on his twitter page wayne rooney shows off hair transplant on his twitter page
As one of the country’s leading hair transplant surgeons, Manchester-based Dr Bessam Farjo was delighted with Wayne Rooney’s very public announcement that he’d taken steps to tackle his premature baldness last week.
Wayne stunned fans when he openly confirmed he’d paid for hair transplant surgery, stating on his Twitter site: “I was going bald, so why not?”
He later updated his followers with a picture after the procedure. He wrote: “Hi all there’s my head. It will take a few months to grow. Still a bit bloody too. But that’s all normal. #hairwego”
As far as Dr Farjo is concerned, the more people who speak out about the surgery the better – to halt the stigma that’s been attached to those trying to tackle male pattern baldness.
And as a host of comments on our website have revealed, many men are pleased that Wayne has spoken out.
One wrote: “27 and my hair loss is worse than Wayne’s. If I could afford to have the procedure I would. People may laugh but it is very debilitating, especially at a young age. It’s horrible and people do treat you differently.”
Dr Farjo, who opened his hair loss clinic in 1992 and has treated hundreds of men – and women – with premature baldness over the years, says the more people who speak out about having surgery the better.
He says: “I think Wayne Rooney has been very clever to come out with this so publicly, and by doing so he’s been putting the issue into the public domain, rather than himself.
“I think the more and more people in the public eye who come out with it and show that it can be a good thing, it all helps in removing the stigma that has been attached to having surgery.”
Dr Farjo says that whenever a celebrity reveals they have undertaken the surgery, it boosts the number of approaches from the public. His celebrity clients have included ex-EastEnders star Shaun Williamson and Dragon’s Den star Duncan Bannatyne.
Dr Farjo says: “For the last few years, we’ve had a fair number of well-known people who’ve come out about it, and every time it develops the public interest. It just shows you can’t have enough public information about this. There has been an incredible amount of public interest since Wayne spoke about it, I’ve already had a huge number of enquiries.
“Over the past five years, there’s been an acceleration in demand because there’s been a lot more people aware that it could look good, not the stereotype image from the past, when people would think of Elton John or Russ Abbott.
“Now people talk about Duncan Bannatyne and James Nesbitt. Maybe in future they’ll talk about Wayne Rooney.”
Reports suggest that Rooney has spent £30,000 on his hair loss surgery, at a Harley Street surgery in London, although Dr Farjo says he’s surprised it would have cost that much.
There are two alternative methods with hair transplant surgery and they range in price depending on the amount of hair transplanted, but Dr Farjo says his operations range from £5,000 to £10,000.
He explains: “Hair transplant surgery is the same operation, but there are two alternative methods. The first method takes a block of tissue right at the centre of head where hair is at its thickest and healthiest and most guaranteed to stay for life, this is called the strip method.
“The alternative is to shave the entire head and then take out little 1mm rounded pieces of tissue that take a group of hairs at a time, and this is called Folicular Unit Extraction (FUE).
“These are the methods of extracting the hair, and once you have it that’s when it comes to the artistic side, when you decide where to place the bunch of hair in your hand. FUE is more expensive because it is more laborious as the doctor has to spend a long time extracting these hairs, but that doesn’t explain the amount of money being quoted in the papers for Wayne Rooney. I suspect if he did pay £35,000 that was linked to his celebrity status!”
To transplant around 10,000 hairs with the strip method would cost around £10,000, and transplanting 2,000 hairs by the FUE method would cost from £5,000 – £6,000.
Now here’s the crunch question: Just how painful is this sort of operation?
Dr Farjo says: “The operation itself is done under local anaesthetic. In general for someone who has significant baldness they’d be in surgery all day, coming in at 8am and hopefully we’d be done by 4pm.
“After the op you can expect a little bit of discomfort and bruising but you get anti-inflammatories and painkillers. After four-five days you should not feel any more pain. Most people take a week off work after the procedure.”
But while Rooney has been proudly displaying the results of his procedure on Twitter, Dr Farjo warns that patients should not expect instant results. And it might not be until the last ball is kicked of next year’s Premier League season before Wayne can boast a full mane of hair.
Dr Farjo says: “It’s not an instant result, what we are planting is the root of the hair, it’s not the hair on the outside, the roots are the live bit, and they start working on new hairs, so it doesn’t break through the skin for about four months. It comes through as very short, almost baby hair, and over time it develops length and colour, but it could be a year after the surgery before you get the real look.
“I saw the quote from Wayne saying he’s happy with the result of his surgery, but what you are seeing there is a crusting, from a distance it’s like a rash, and that will resolve in the coming weeks.”
For anyone thinking of following Wayne’s example and booking in for the surgery, it might be worth remembering that it’s still not a guaranteed solution to future baldness.
And Dr Farjo says he is usually reluctant to operate on anyone much younger than 25-year-old Rooney, but there is no upper age limit as long as the patients are healthy.
He beams: “My oldest patient was 81 years old.”
Even men who are almost completely bald can be helped, says the doctor. He says: “We’ve removed hair from the chest and transferred it to the top, but you would only do that if there really is not much hair left on the scalp.”
