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A pubic hair transplant (PHT) has two meanings:
A pubic hair transplant is actually one of the earliest types of hair transplant procedures to ever be attempted. A Japanese dermatologist named Dr. Okuda conducted some of the world’s first successful pubic hair transplant procedures just before World War II. Among his many experiments with surgical hair restoration, he performed what is considered to be the first pubic hair transplant by transferring scalp hair into the pubic regions of women. Dr. Okuda has a variety of tools at his disposal including punch tools as small as 1mm in diameter, rivaling punches made today, but the majority of his punches were significantly larger. The procedure was somewhat similar to follicular unit extraction surgery (FUE) technique in use today, except this method was far more rudimentary and crude due to a lack of modern refinement of his tools and lack of expertise.
Quite simply, there are too many other donor areas of the body that are preferable over pubic hair such as the arms, legs, chest, and of course the scalp. Pubic hairs have vastly different characteristics than scalp hairs, and although hair grafts do sometimes adapt certain characteristics of the native scalp, pubic hairs still largely remain relatively shortened and wiry after transplantation. Also, in many cases, the color of the pubic and scalp hair is vastly different to begin with. For these reasons, if pubic hair grafts were to be used on a completely bald area of scalp, the difference between the restored hair and the areas with native hairs would be easily noticeable. As such, pubic hair transplants are usually done on areas of the scalp that still retain some original hairs. When used this way, the pubic hair grafts blend in with the preexisting hairs more easily, and can actually add density.
While the current trend in the West is to shave the pubic hair away (especially for women), other parts of the world view pubic hair far differently. In Asian countries such as Korea, for example, pubic hair carries connotations of sexual maturity and fertility. Women do not shave their pubic hair because it is considered attractive and desirable. In fact, it is common for a woman to worry about not having enough pubic hair. This is why many Korean women have public hair transplants in order to increase the volume and density of hair in their pubic regions.
