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Posts Tagged ‘hair’

It is important to understand the basic terminology used in laser hair removal techniques.  This gives  you a better understanding of what the procedure entails.  It also helps to put many people at ease to completely understand the words used in the treatment.

Absorption is the uptake of one substance into another.

Active medium is the part of the laser that absorbs and stores energy.

American bikini wax, is a standard bikini wax in which hair is removed from either side of the panty line at the top of the thigh.

Anagen is the growth phase in the hair cycle in which a new hair is synthesized.

Brazilian bikini wax, is a bikini wax in which all of the hair is removed in the pubic region, including the hair on the buttocks and labia.

Catagen is a transitional stage of a hair’s growth cycle, occurring between the growth and resting stages.

Chromophore is a group of atoms in  a molecule that produces color through selective light absorption.

Coherent light are light waves that travel in parallel, and in the same direction.

Dermal scattering is the change that occurs between the laser’s spot size at the surface of the skin and the spot size deeper in the tissue.

Dermis is the underlying or inner layer of the skin.

Electrons are stable, negatively charged elementary particles that orbit the nucleus of an atom.

Energy source is the device in the laser that supplies energy to the active medium.

Epidermis is the thin outermost layer of the skin.

Excited states is the conditions of a physical system in which the energy level is higher than the lowest possible level.

Fissure is a crack or cut in the skin.

French bikini wax, is a bikini wax in which all of the hair is removed from the pubic region except for a stripe of hair on the pubis.

Hair follicle bulb is the bulbous base of the hair follicle that houses the dermal papilla.
Keloids scars are raised areas of fibrous tissue.

Melanin are grains of pigment that give hair and skin its color.

Monochromatic light is of one wavelength, and therefore appears as one color.

Nanometers are each one billionth of a meter.

Optical cavity is a part of the laser that contains the active medium.

Polychromatic light consists of light of multiple wavelengths, appearing as different colors.

Pulse duration is the duration of an individual pulse of laser light, which is usually measured in milli-seconds.

Selective photothermolysis is the selective targeting of an area using a specific wavelength to absorb light into that target area sufficient to damage the tissue of the target while allowing the surrounding area to remain relatively untouched.

Spontaneous emission is the process or an excited atom, after holding extra energy for a fraction of a second, releases its energy as another photon then falls back to its grounded state.

Spot size is the width of a laser beam.

Terminal hair is hair found on the scalp arms legs Alexa lay in pubic areas.

Vellus hair is generally fine, non-pigmented hair found on the face that is often called peach fuzz.

Wavelength is the distance between two consecutive peaks or troughs in a wave.

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.