Hair Transplant- Hair Restoration/ Transplant, Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery

Hair transplant surgery is a procedure performed by a qualified plastic or dermatologic surgeon in order to relocate hair follicles from normal hair-covered areas of the scalp to bald areas. There are various surgical techniques available to regain a fully hair-covered scalp, and your doctor will provide detailed information on the risks and benefits of each technique.

Causes of baldness

Hair loss in most cases is caused by genetics, a condition called “pattern baldness” or “androgen alopecia”. This type of hair loss is particularly common in men, where genetic and hormonal factors affect hair growth and contribute to male-pattern baldness.

Other causes of baldness include:

• Malnutrition and diet
• Stress
• Certain illnesses
• Hormonal disturbances
• Certain medications

A good candidate for hair transplant surgery will have an acceptable remaining surface area covered with hair to be utilized as a donor site. Hair transplant surgery is not suitable for people who are losing hair while receiving chemotherapy.

Procedure

Hair transplant surgery is an outpatient procedure, which can be done either in your doctor’s office or at a hospital. The procedure is done using local anesthesia that’s injected under the skin of your scalp. You will be awake during the procedure but should not feel any pain. Regardless of the technique used, the donor site of the scalp will be shaved before surgery to make it easier to extract hair follicles.

There are two main types of hair transplant surgery, as follows:

• Follicular unit strip surgery (FUSS): To perform this technique, the surgeon will remove a 6-10 inch long strip of normal hair-covered scalp from the back or sides of your head (donor site), and then close the skin. This strip is then cut into small pieces and implanted into the bald areas of your scalp.
• Follicular unit extraction (FUE): During this procedure, the surgeon will remove numerous small individual hair follicles from the normal hair-covered area of your scalp by making hundreds or thousands of small punch incisions. These extracted hair follicles will then be implanted into the bald regions of the head after they have been prepped by tiny incisions to receive the grafts.

You might require several sessions to cover all of your bald areas. Each session can take several hours to complete, and they are performed months apart to allow for proper healing. Stitches are usually removed after 10 days, and you might be discharged with a gauze dressing on the treated areas.

Additional surgical hair replacement techniques include:

• Tissue expansion: An expander balloon is implanted under the scalp and inflated to expand the overlying hair-covered scalp over weeks. The expanded skin is then used to cover bald areas of the head
• Flap surgery: Your surgeon will cut out a hair-covered part of the scalp, but keep it attached to the blood vessels supplying it, and relocate it in a way to cover the bald areas.
• Scalp reduction: The surgeon will perform an incision and excise bald areas of the scalp, and then pull the hair-covered areas closer together.

Risks

Hair transplant surgery is a safe procedure. Some of the possible side effects of surgery include:

• Surgical site infection
• Bleeding from your wounds
• Swelling of your scalp
• Bruising around your eyes
• Loss of sensation in some of the treated areas
• Losing your transplanted hair temporarily (known as shock loss)
• Scalp itchiness
• Unnatural looking results

You should always discuss the risks of surgery with your doctor during your initial visit.