Are you interested in getting a hair transplant to give yourself the full head of hair you’ve been dreaming of? If so, you’ll probably want to know a bit about the process that you’ll be going through.
Here’s a brief overview of what you can expect out of the process of hair replacement in Greensboro, NC.
Before the operation
Before the procedure begins, you’ll go through pre-operative assessment and planning. This means you’ll sit down in a consultation setting with the technician, who will carefully analyze your scalp and discuss the expectations you should have out of the process. There will be several possible approaches that can be used in the procedure, and this is the point at which you and the technician will determine the best approach for your situation.
Analysis includes looking at the density of existing hair, and planning out any additional pre-operative care strategies, such as staying away from certain medications and alcohol.
Harvesting
Transplant procedures are outpatient procedures that are given under mild sedation and injected local anesthesia. There are a couple main ways in which donor grafts get extracted: through strip harvesting and through follicular unit extraction (FUE).
Strip harvesting is the most common technique by far, so we will discuss that method here. In this process, the technician takes a strip of skin from the posterior scalp, in an area of good hair growth. A single-, double- or triple-bladed scalpel will be used to remove these strips of hair-bearing tissue from the donor site. Every incision gets planned out carefully so you’re guaranteed to remove intact hair follicles. The technician then closes up the wound and prepares the extracted sample for transplanting.
Transplant procedure
The harvested samples are then transplanted onto the designated area on the head. The technician uses small micro blades or needles to puncture the sites that will receive the grafts, and then places them in those locations in a predetermined pattern and density.
There are several common applications for this type of procedure. It can be performed simply for eyebrow transplants rather than full hair transplants, it can be used for people who suffer from alopecia or it can be used to reconstruct or lower the frontal hair line.
If there are insufficient donor hairs on the back of the head, there are some cases in which it may be possible to perform body hair transplantation, but donor hair must exist on the shoulders, chest, back, torso or legs. This type of transplant surgery can only be performed with the FUE harvesting method, which differs from the method we described above, and it is not as frequently used.
Post-operative care
During the first 10 days, some of the transplanted hairs may fall out, which is fully normal. After two to three months, new hair will begin to grow from those follicles, and the hair will start to come in much more normally, thickening over the course of six to nine months. Your hair replacement team will instruct you in the dressings and cleanings you need to keep up with in the first couple weeks after the operation.
For more information about hair replacement in Greensboro, NC, contact Raveen Hair Replacement today.