O#23   Hair follicles of anterior scalp are more vulnerable than posterior scalp in telogen effluvium

Chull-Wan Ihm, Seong-Sin Hong. Chonbuk University Hospital, Chonju, South Korea

In telogen effluvium it has been known that hair loss affects diffusely throughout the scalp but we have seen that there is regional difference on a scalp in the severity of the follicular involvement in telogen effluvium. In 14 cases of acute telogen effluvium, (5 cases of post-febrile, 6 cases of postpartum and 3 cases of other stress conditions) we made photographic comparison between the anterior scalp and the posterior scalp of the patients. In 7 cases of them the unit area trichogram of the anterior scalp and the posterior scalp were also compared each other. In interpretation of the trichogram, excessive numbers of newly emerging short anagen hairs as well as excessive telogen hairs were regarded as affected follicles during the course of the telogen effluvium. The result showed that the number of affected follicles of the anterior scalp were about 63% higher than the posterior scalp (p<0.05). The photographic comparisons of the 14 cases all revealed apparently more severe involvement of the anterior scalp compared with the posterior scalp. Considering the result above the frontal side of the human scalp appears to be inherently more vulnerable than the posterior side.