Alopecia areata, commonly known as “ghost shaving”, is a sudden onset of limited patchy baldness on the head with no conscious symptoms. There are round or oval shaped bald spots on the scalp, varying in size and number, with normal localized skin.
Patients with alopecia are affected by localized hair growth in a few months to a few years, starting with thin, soft, grayish hair that resembles fine hair and gradually becoming black.
Most of the time, baldness occurs suddenly, without conscious symptoms, and is often discovered unintentionally. At the beginning, the hair loss is isolated in a round or oval shape with clear borders, one or several pieces, with a smooth surface and no pain or itching.
In some patients, all the hair is lost, which is called “total baldness”. In some cases, in addition to hair loss, eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, armpit hair, pubic hair, etc. are also lost, which is called “general baldness”.
In baldness, the lesions appear as round or oval non-scarring hair loss, and “exclamation point”-like hairs are often seen at the edges of the baldness.