Dr. Michael Beehner has been involved in hair restoration
surgery since 1989 and has been full-time in transplanting
hair since 1995. He has been a leader in the specialty
during the past several years – conducting several
important research projects, chairing the Examination
Committee for the new American Board of Hair Restoration
Surgery, serving as co-editor of the Hair Transplant
Forum International, the principal journal of hair
surgery in the world, lecturing at almost all of the
various hair surgery conventions around the world,
and authoring two chapters in the latest edition of
Hair Transplantation, the principal text in our specialty,
edited by Dr. Unger.
In 2001 he published in Dermatologic Surgery the landmark
article, “Nomenclature Proposal for the Zones and
Landmarks of the Balding Scalp,” which put together
for the first time a coherent system for naming all of
these areas, which is now followed by all of the hair surgeons
and dermatologists in the world. He has been a pioneer
in the use of the “frontal forelock concept” for
the extremely bald male and has done recent important research
on “stretch-back” in scalp reductions and on
the affect of “limited-depth recipient sites” on
hair growth. For his research efforts, he was awarded the
Platinum Follicle Award in 1999 by the International Society
of Hair Restoration Surgery for the year’s best research,
and on three separate occasions has been awarded a Research
Grant Award by the ISHRS.
Dr. Beehner has been married for 34 years to his wife,
Harrilyn, who serves as office manager. They have four
grown children and three grandchildren. In his spare time,
he enjoys running marathons, playing baseball, playing
guitar and harmonica, stamp collecting, and working in
prison ministry.
Dr. Beehner attended Loyola University in Chicago for
his pre-med studies and obtained his M.D. degree in Chicago
at the University of Illinois Medical School, where he
also met his wife. His internship was at Wesley Medical
Center in Wichita , Kansas in family practice. After two
years in the military service, he did a one-year general
surgery residency, which included three months of plastic
surgery. He finished his formal education by finishing
a family practice residency at the University of Wisconsin
. He is presently an Associate Clinical Professor of Dermatology
at Albany Medical College , and will be involved with teaching
dermatology residents hair transplant surgery in the newly
formed department.
He is fascinated with the artistic aspects of hair restoration
surgery and the fact that each patient is uniquely different.
His practice has been cutting all grafts under stereoscopic
microscopes since 1995 and offer patients the choice of
being transplanted with all follicular unit grafts or with
a “combination approach”, which utilizes around
80% FU’s and 20% “combination FU’s” (mostly
composed of either 2 or 3 adjacent FU’s, carefully
dissected under the microscope). Around 15% of his patients
are females, and the practice also takes great pride in
their frequent eyebrow restoration work. Around 20% of
the patients fall into the category of being “corrective” situations,
in which past transplant work is corrected and refined.
Summary
of our Philosophy
For each patient that presents to us for
hair transplantation, our goal is to try and achieve
as much naturalness and density as possible.
We feel these two goals are best achieved when the plan
is individualized for each patient, depending on what
we are presented with. There are a host of factors that
must be taken into account with each patient before formulating
the best plan: Some of the more important factors are:
the patient’s age, the hair-to-skin color contrast,
the caliber of the hair, the patient’s goals for
later styling, and, perhaps most important, the ratio
of available donor hair in relation to the recipient
area in need of coverage.
Dr. Michael Beehner, MD
Dr. Michael Beehner has been involved in hair restoration
surgery since 1989 and has been full-time in transplanting
hair since 1995. He has been a leader in the specialty
during the past several years – conducting several
important research projects, chairing the Examination
Committee for the new American Board of Hair Restoration
Surgery, serving as co-editor of the Hair Transplant
Forum International, the principal journal of hair
surgery in the world, lecturing at almost all of the
various hair surgery conventions around the world,
and authoring two chapters in the latest edition of
Hair Transplantation, the principal text in our specialty,
edited by Dr. Unger. 
For each patient that presents to us for
hair transplantation, our goal is to try and achieve
as much naturalness and density as possible.
We feel these two goals are best achieved when the plan
is individualized for each patient, depending on what
we are presented with. There are a host of factors that
must be taken into account with each patient before formulating
the best plan: Some of the more important factors are:
the patient’s age, the hair-to-skin color contrast,
the caliber of the hair, the patient’s goals for
later styling, and, perhaps most important, the ratio
of available donor hair in relation to the recipient
area in need of coverage.