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Posts Tagged ‘hair transplant’

It is getting more common for people to get hair transplant procedures as the methods keep improving.  It is just less obvious than in earlier times when everyone could spot a person with bad hair plugs.  Yet, there are still a few facts about hair transplant surgery that are not widely known.

1.  A large percentage of men have balding issues.  In fact, 50% of American men that are 50 years old or older are dealing with some amount of hair loss.  Hair problems in today’s society beg to be conquered.  Some do it by shaving their heads completely.  Others take the exact opposite route and have hair transplant surgery.  Those who accept their baldness may have a healthy psyche, but they are slightly out of step with the rest of the world.

2.  The procedure is permanent.  If you decide you do not like the results, it is not as simple as taking off a wig to change your hair.  You would have to go through many surgeries and your head may never look the same.  This is why you should never accept any doctor’s offer to do a few hair grafts and see how you like it before doing a full hair transplant surgery.  Once you start, you are committed.

3.  You need several days of rest afterward hair transplant surgery.  Since the operation is so easy to endure, you might think that you can jump up and go right back to your regular activities.  It is just your scalp after all, not muscle or bone.  The truth is that you have many small wounds and you need to protect them.

4.  Hair transplant can be a time-consuming commitment.  Treatment can often last one to two years.  Mega-sessions where thousands of grafts are done in one sitting help to shorten the overall time.  However, the length of these sessions is often grueling.

5.  Hair transplant surgery may be combined with other procedures.  If you do not have enough hair, you cannot have a normal hair transplant surgery.  However, there are other surgeries that can be used in conjunction with hair transplant to achieve similar results.  The difference is that these procedures are generally more painful.

6.  The grafts may not survive.  Few surgeons will divulge to you the fact that hair grafts do not always survive after hair transplant surgery.  The hope is that only a few will be lost and the overall result will not suffer.  The reality is that is what usually happens.

7.  Hair transplant treatments do not cost as much as you think.  For example, you might reasonably spend $12,000 on a hair transplant.  If you got it done at age 30 and died at age 70, you would have the transplant 40 years.

That would average out to $300 per year, or $25 per month.  Many of the supposedly low cost treatments for hair loss cost much more than $25 per month.  You would actually save by getting the hair transplant surgery done in the first place.

Hair transplant surgery begins, after anesthesia is applied, with removing donor tissue.  Follicular units are then extracted from the tissue using a stereomicroscope.  This is all done by skilled nurses and technicians.  The insertion of the hair into the receptor sites comes later.

Once the follicular units for the hair transplant are dissected out of the donor tissue, technicians set them aside in a saline solution.  The temperature must be ideal or the small grafts will not survive the procedure.  This is done very carefully in order to ensure a good result.

The surgeon will make tiny incisions into the scalp where the hair transplant grafts are to go.  These are called the receptor sites.  They are made with a very thin surgical needle.  The surgeon must have an eye for detail to properly set the receptor sites.  He must also be very artistic to achieve a natural look, especially at the hairline.

The direction the hair grows, both on the front of the head and at the crown, are very important, too.  The doctor must make the condition of the newly placed hair look like the patient’s own natural scalp hair.  The angle that the hair is put in determines how much it will stand up from the head.

Once the surgeon has made all the hair transplant incisions that lay out the design he has created, the specially trained surgical team steps in.  They use his plan to accomplish his goals, and in turn the goals of the patient.  The groundwork is done for them by the surgeon when he does his incisions.

The surgical team takes care to get every hair transplant graft into the receptor sites as they have been laid out.  They waste no time, though, because the small grafts are vulnerable when their follicles are outside of the skin.  The goal is to get the grafts in as quickly as possible while staying true to the design.

Next, the doctor looks over the hair transplant for quality control.  He may take a good deal of time tweaking the placement of grafts before he is satisfied that they are all set properly into their receptor sites in a pleasing fashion.  When he gives the ok, the surgical technicians again take over the patient’s care.

The grafts will be more permanently set into place when the technicians dry them by blowing a cool blow dryer across them.  This makes them adhere in their place so that no bandages are necessary.  The patient will be asked to bring, or will be given, a baseball cap for the ride home from the hair transplant procedure.

The doctor will want to see how the grafts are doing the day following the hair transplant.  The patient will go in for a check-up so that any problems can be corrected quickly.  If that is not possible, at least plans can be made to correct them at a future time.

The doctor will have done his job with the hair transplant procedure at this point.  All that remains is periodic checkups.  If the hair loss is extensive, there may be more procedures, but all the hair transplant surgeries will be done with the same amount of care.

When you shop for a hair transplant surgeon, you will find that different doctors give widely varying estimates of the number of grafts you will need.  This can make you very uncertain about the wisdom of even getting a hair transplant.  It helps to have a fair idea of what to expect.

Unfortunately, there are hair transplant surgeons who do not take their position of respect seriously.  Some doctors are even transplanting donor hair into areas where the patient still has hair.  Perhaps this is easier than placing it where it rightfully belongs – on the balding spots.

For whatever reason, some hair transplant patients are not getting the number of grafts on their balding areas as they are billed.  This is testified by certain doctors who have seen the results.  The density of hair on these patients’ heads is not commensurate with the number of grafts they supposedly got.

The best hope a patient has of getting what he pays for in a hair transplant is to learn to calculate the number of grafts he needs to cover his balding area.  If the surgeon he sees is not in that ballpark, it may be wiser to look for another surgeon.  If however, the surgeon estimates a similar number, just make sure all the grafts go onto the balding parts of your scalp.

To calculate the number of grafts you need for hair transplant surgery, there are several factors to take into account.  The thickness of the hair shaft makes a difference.  Whether the hair is curly or straight determines if the hair will lie flat or stand up, creating more fullness.

Another important factor for hair transplant is the color of the hair in contrast to the color of the skin.  For a light-skinned man with light-colored hair, or a dark-skinned man with dark colored hair, it takes a certain amount of hair to cover the baldness.  However, a light-skinned man with very dark hair will need much more hair to provide the same amount of coverage.

You should figure that the average number of hair transplant grafts needed to cover a balding area is 25% of the original hair that was there.  You can move up or down from this figure according to your other factors such as thickness, curliness, or color.  Then, you can use this number to figure up the grafts needed.

Based on the fact that the average Caucasian male has a density of 2 hairs per millimeter, it can be assumed that the average density of hair is 1250 hairs per square inch.  Figuring at an average of 2 hairs per follicular unit, it would take 625 follicular units per square inch.

To get 25% of that, you would need 156 follicular units per square inch.  All that remains is to measure your balding area and multiply the number of square inches by 156.  When you know what number of grafts to expect during your hair transplant surgery, you will be a savvy consumer.  It does not hurt one bit go into the process with an idea of your own about how the treatment should go.