[Hair transplantation. Past, present, and future]

This paper briefly reflects the author's ideas regarding hair transplantation based on 25 years of experience in this field. Hair transplantation is a technique that moves hair from the donor dominant scalp to the recipient scalp with a variety of methods and protocols. The first written report on this surgical art form was made by Sasgawa in 1930, who described an insertion technique. Okuda later wrote about punch autografts and homografts in humans and animals in 1939; after which time Tamura and Fujita demonstrated reconstructive techniques with small grafts. However, it was not until 1959 that modern-day hair transplantation began, when Orentreich published a paper describing the theory of donor dominance. Recently, the advent of mini- and micrografts has indeed refined the technique, especially in those with early alopecia, in women and in facial scar alopecias.