Norwood Scale Self-Assessment

It is the seven-stage classification of male pattern hair loss published by O'Tar Norwood in 1975, building on earlier work by James Hamilton — which is why you sometimes see it called the Hamilton-Norwood scale. Stage 1 is an unchanged adolescent hairline and stage 7 is the horseshoe of hair around the sides and back. It is a description of a pattern, not a measure of severity or of how fast you are losing hair, and every clinic uses it as shorthand when planning grafts.

Usually not yet. A slightly receded temple is a normal mature hairline for a large proportion of adult men, and a transplant placed in front of a hairline that is still moving leaves an island of transplanted hair with a new gap behind it a few years later. The standard advice at this stage is to stabilise the loss medically, photograph it every three months, and revisit surgery once the pattern has held still for a year or two. A clinic willing to operate immediately at Norwood 2 without discussing stabilisation is not planning for your thirties.

No. Female pattern hair loss usually spreads diffusely across the top of the scalp while the frontal hairline is preserved, and it is described with the Ludwig scale instead. Women also have a much wider range of underlying causes — thyroid disease, iron deficiency, hormonal changes, telogen effluvium after illness or childbirth — which means the first step is a diagnosis from a dermatologist, not a graft estimate. Transplants for women are possible and can work very well, but only once the cause is known and the loss is stable.