How does hair transplant really work?
Hair transplantation is a surgical technique through which hair is moved from the donor site to the recipient areas. It is used to treat male progressive baldness on a main serious note. I know how much eager are you to know the entire hair transplantation process. So not wasting any more time let’s get directly to what we’ll be discussing in this article.
So let’s get started.
How does a hair transplant surgery work?
• Pre-operative assessment and Planning
Assessment includes analyzing the victim’s scalp, discussing their preferences and expectations, assigning sessions (single, multiple, etc.) and the results. This pre-operative assessment tells the existing hair density so that the final results could be assessed before actually initiating the procedure.
The patient is told to refrain from taking any medicine or cosmetic to avoid intra-operative bleeding and poor grafting. Alcohol consumption and smoking should also be stopped for excellent grafting.
• Harvesting
Before harvesting, sedation and injecting anesthesia to the scalp is performed. Also, the scalp is shampooed and treated with an antibacterial agent. The transplantation starts afterward.
The donor grafts are then extracted using the following two techniques:
1: Strip Harvesting
In this, the surgeon takes out a strip of tissues/follicles from the donor site. The surgeon plans each incision carefully to remove intact hair follicles from the scalp. The surgeon punctures the recipient area using a needle to form space for the incoming grafts. They then angle the wounds to imitate the natural hair growth and pattern. Strip Harvesting, however, leaves thin linear scars at the donor site which other hairs cover automatically even at shorter lengths.
2: FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction)
In FUE individual follicular units are taken out from the donor area under the application of anesthesia. Surgeon thereafter transplants these follicles to the punctured areas (using a sharp blade or a needle) on the scalp. The wounds are filled up and angled to promote the natural hair pattern that fits the scalp. FUE is specialized at giving natural results and is finished after a number of sessions. Since it involves direct grafting to the recipient’s region, no linear scars are made at the donor sites.
• Types of Surgery:
The surgery varies as per the donor sites. So they are classified as:
• Eyebrow transplant
• Androgenetic Alopecia
• Frontal hair reconstruction
Post Operative Care
The wounds in the scalp are carefully dressed through a semi-permeable membrane to allow seepage of blood and the tissue fluid. The recipient area is advised to be shielded from the sun. Shampooing is continued after two days of surgery to avoid scabs around the hair shafts. Scabs stick to the hair shaft and increase the hair loss again. During the first ten days, some of the newly transplanted hair may fall out which is called “shock loss”. New hair comes after a span of two or three months.
Final Words:
So this is how hair transplantation therapy actually works. All the mid-level procedures have also been discussed.