Tag: Hair Transplant

How You Can Avoid Dishonest Hair Transplant Doctors

It is easy to assume that any doctor will do everything in his power to do right by you. However, it would be nave to think that there are no hair transplant doctors that are dishonestly trying to use you to make money and nothing more. There are a few things to take into consideration.

1. Watch out for high pressure tactics. One example is when a promotion is run guaranteeing a special price if you schedule your procedure by a certain date. Most reputable doctors charge a fair price for the hair transplant surgery and so do not need to discount it. Another example is when you go in and the doctor or other people in his office will not take no for an answer. Any good doctor knows the decision is yours to make.

2. Try not to use a doctor who starts you off with a salesman or other person who has nothing to do with the health occupations. You need a person with good training to show you all you need to make your mind up about the surgery. You do not need a person whose only agenda is to sell you on getting hair transplant procedures done.

3. You should start to get concerned if your doctor has no specific good stories to tell about hair transplant surgery they have done. You need to see before and after photos. You need a way to contact former patients. If at all possible, you need to be able to visit with patients the doctor has treated so they can show you the results in person. You are not asking too much – it is a major commitment you are making.

4. If your doctor says to try a few hair transplant grafts and then decide, run. This is never a good idea. Once you start having the grafts done, you are committing to a full set of procedures. Otherwise, your hair will end up looking out of balance.

5. Do not get involved with a doctor who does not listen. A good doctor knows how important the hair transplant is to you. He will listen to your questions about hair transplant and provide intelligent answers. He will also try to find out what your goals are to see if they are realistic.

6. Keep it realistic. If the doctor says the hair transplant will cost an exorbitant amount of time or money, be wary. You should have a basic idea of the going rates before you make this decision. On the other hand, if the doctor talks about how little it will cost and how quick and easy it will be, be suspicious of that too. The answer should lie somewhere in the middle.

7. Not all hair transplant stories are good ones. If the doctor you consult with claims that his are, you cannot trust what he says. Virtually every doctor has some procedure that has gone wrong to some degree. A good doctor will admit this and provide a plan to avoid it.

There are hair transplant stories that would make most people think twice about having the surgery. However, it is not a good representation of the fine work that most hair restoration surgeons are doing. Just make sure you find one of those good surgeons.

How to Take Care after Hair Transplant Surgery

Once you have made the decision to have hair transplant surgery, you are probably jumping ahead to thinking about your post-op plans. You most likely cannot wait to see the faces on your friends and acquaintances when they notice your new full head of hair. In the meantime, you have to go through the surgery and take care so that your hair transplant will be successful.

Your hair transplant will not heal unless you keep the newly operated-on skin out of the sunlight. The surgery will make the skin especially sensitive. If you protect the skin on your scalp after getting a scalp hair transplant, you will help the wounds heal much faster.

You can start out by getting some kind of hat. It does not matter what kind of hat it is, as long as it is fairly loose-fitting so that it does not rub on your new hair transplant grafts. You should not have to put up with this for long. After a couple of weeks, you can replace the cap with sunscreen. It should have an SPF of at least 30.

Having just the right amount of blood flow to the hair transplant sites will make a big difference in how fast they heal. For example, you need to make sure you get enough blood flow during the night. You can do this by sleeping on pillows to elevate your head. Your usual pillows can be used, or you can buy wedge-shaped pillows made for this purpose.

On the other hand, you do not want too much blood flow. You should get plenty of rest after your hair transplant surgery. For the first few weeks it is not wise to engage in any physically demanding activities. Then, the blood flow will be too much. Your transplants may start to bleed.

It is important to clean your hair just as your doctor recommends after hair transplant surgery. You will be given a special shampoo to use and specific instructions on how and when to use it. It is necessary to clean gently but thoroughly. At first, you may find yourself rinsing your hair many times a day. Just be sure that you do not bother the hair transplant site by scratching or rubbing it.

Your hair transplant doctor will want you to come in for a check of your transplants about a week after your surgery. Be sure to be at that appointment on time. If you have any questions about how to care for your hair, bring them up at that time.

Ask your doctor when you will be ready to use a comb on your new hair. You might be surprised at how soon you can use one. Then, your doctor will schedule other check-ups, which you should also attend.

At first it may seem as if you have to be very careful with your hair – and you do! It does not make sense to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars having your hair transplant surgery and then not follow through with good care. However, in no time at all, you will be treating this new hair just as you treated the hair you once had there.

How Surgeons Hide Donor Scars during Hair Transplant Surgery

Hair transplant procedures leave scars. It is just a fact of life. However, if the surgeries are handled in the proper manner, the scars are barely noticeable. They are thin to the point that they can barely be seen in most cases. Skilled doctors have ways of making the scars practically disappear.

First of all, the surgeon must be very skilled in choosing the site of the path where he harvests the donor tissue for the hair transplant. Its width should be no more than one centimeter in most instances. This allows the scalp to close completely when sutured back into place.

If the hair transplant procedure is done well, the scar will not be noticeable even if the patient likes to wear his hair in a short style. The scar will only become unsightly if the patient is genetically predisposed to keloid scarring. People who have this kind of problem need special treatment.

If a patient is known to suffer from keloid scarring, the first thing a reputable doctor will do before hair transplant surgery is to explain the possibility of unsightly scars. This requires a very honest surgeon, since the patient may decide the procedure is not worth the scarring it will cause.

The next step with such a patient would be to discuss ways the keloid could be covered. It could be camouflaged by wearing the hair just a little longer. Other patients have rubbery skin that stretches too much and so causes wide donor scars. These two groups add up to about 5% of the patients who have hair transplant surgery.

The other 95% of patients have no problems with their tiny scars at all. The hair transplant doctors are able to keep the donor strips very thin. They also use a double layer closure method to help the skin heal properly. As long as the surgeon knows what she is doing, the scars are a minor consideration.

Another aspect of scarring is when doctors go in for multiple hair transplant surgeries. A new strip of donor tissue has to be taken each time to supply the grafts for the new transplant. It would seem that this would lead to a large number of scars on the back and sides of the head.

Actually, there is a hair transplant procedure that keeps the scarring to one thin line. It consists of cutting the new thin donor strip immediately above the original scar. In most cases, the old scar is removed at the same time. When the wound is stitched up, the entire area of both the old scar and the new cut are sewn into one line. If multiple surgeries are done, this procedure is used every time.

Hair transplant surgery leaves scars. That much is certain. If you are one of the unlucky few who scar easily, you might have scars big enough that you have to hide them. Yet, if you are like most people, you will not have scars that anyone will notice at all.

How Hair Is Inserted in Hair Transplant Surgery

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.