As with any surgical procedure, thorough counselling before hair-restoration surgery is critical. Patients require education to make informed decisions regarding this elective procedure, i.e. whether to undergo it, and if so, which procedures. Because hair restoration is cosmetic surgery, discussing patients areas of concern, explaining treatment options, and providing a realistic picture of expected results are important. The present techniques and technology of hair transplantation surgery can give a proper candidate realistic and natural appearing transplanted hair. Using 2 or 3 hair transplant sessions, the candidate has a successful outcome.
Hair transplantation involves removing small pieces of hair-bearing scalp grafts, or plugs, from a donor site, often from the thick hair on the sides and back of the head and relocating them to a bald or thinning area. The larger grafts were the standard until about a decade ago, when transplant surgeons looked critically at their work and the correlation between their results and graft size. They decided that smaller grafts would provide better results, because smaller grafts contain fewer hairs and, therefore, less clumping of transplanted hairs, which is responsible for that characteristic sprout-like look. That began the era of mini-grafts and micro-grafts. Let’s look more closely at these as we learn how hair transplantation works.
Anyone who has experienced permanent hair loss may be a candidate for hair restoration surgery, including:
