Thick and healthy hairs contribute a lot towards men’s beauty. Unfortunately, some people lose them at earlier stage. Baldness really bothers the beauty conscious people, as they lose their self-confidence. They even hesitate to join the social gatherings and events as they take it a major drawback in their personality.
But going bald is no more a matter of worry for them now. They can regain their confidence while restoring back their locks once again. The solution lies in hair transplantation technique that has made it possible to achieve full head of hair.
Hair transplantation is a type of surgery that permanently restores the hair by implanting new follicles into thinning or balding scalp (recipient site) of men or women. The grafts containing follicles are taken from thicker parts of hair, mostly from the back or sides of the head (donor site). This surgical procedure mainly deals with the male pattern baldness.
Hair transplant experts mostly recommend two methods that work the best:
1. Follicular unit strip surgery (FUSS)
2. Follicular unit extraction (FUE)
Before undergoing either of the surgical method, the patient must talk with his doctor in detail about his preferences and the risks involved. That helps the doctor to make necessary assessment and planning. He, on the basis of his deep analysis, decides what procedure must suit the best to the patient’s needs. Then the patient is advised not to take any such medicine that might cause bleeding during the surgery, as bleeding lowers down graft quality.
Before performing the surgery, the doctor injects the local anesthesia into the scalp after washing it with shampoo and treating with some antibacterial agent. Hair transplant procedure, irrespective of what surgical methods the doctor adopts, involves two stages. These two stages are “harvesting” and “grafting” respectively.
Follicular unit strip surgery (FUSS)
During FUSS, the follicular units are harvested (removed from the scalp) by removing a 6-10 inch strip of skin containing a lot of follicles off the posterior part of scalp. Then the surgeon and his team cut out the strip into 500 to 2,000 grafts. Each graft contains a single or a few hairs depending the size, quality, or type of the recipient site.
Follicular unit extraction (FUE)
In FUE harvesting procedure, every single follicular unit containing 1-4 hair is removed off the back of the scalp separately. Though the process is more complicated and time-consuming, but it causes no linear scar, rather only tiny dots on donor site. The team then punctures the site with the help of micro blades or fine needles.
Grafting of the follicular units
At the grafting stage, both the FUSS and The FUE procedures are just the same. The surgical team adopts the same procedure as had been performed at pre-harvesting phase. They make tiny holes at the recipient site with needle and implant one graft into each hole. The process is very delicate and time-consuming, of course. The number of grafts depends mainly on the size of the recipient area. An average transplant needs approximately 1000 to 3000 individual follicular grafts. The ideal transplant containing 4000 grafts is more likely to get a full head of hair. Depending on the size of the recipient area, the process of grafting usually takes 5-10 hours. That’s really a tough job.
Post transplant care and recovery time
Most patients report mild pain and soreness after surgery. You may need to take pain killers, anti-inflammatory drugs, and antibiotics for several days. The potential hair growth side effects usually include scarring and uneven hair growth. It is the surgeon who decides whether to perform a follow-up surgery or not. The recovery time varies from case to case. Within 2 to 3 weeks after surgery, the transplanted hair fall out, but new hair also grow out within 5 to 9 months.
The hair transplant surgery is absolutely a permanent solution, as the hair follicles are taken from the “safe zones” like back and/or sides of the scalp. The hair growing on these sides generally do not fall out.
