Hair Transplant surgery is considered cosmetic, so Medicare or private health insurers do not provide rebates for it. Speak with your physician regarding costs and out-of-pocket expenses associated with it.

The surgeon will first clean your scalp before injecting medicine to numb the back of your head, before extracting a strip of skin from behind your head and sewn closed.

Donor site

An effective hair transplant requires finding an appropriate donor site for healthy follicle harvesting and transplanting, creating an effective full head of natural and full head of hair not affected by hormonal fluctuations which cause male pattern baldness. 

While the back of scalp locations provides the highest concentration of viable grafts, other areas like beard or body hair also can provide viable grafts that may help achieve success.

Prior to any surgery, an experienced surgeon should conduct careful measurements on the donor area in order to ascertain how many follicles can be harvested without disrupting its aesthetic balance. They’ll also want to be certain they’ve enough transplantable follicles available in order to achieve sufficient density in any thinned out spots or balding areas.

For optimal donor sites, the back of the scalp offers the greatest concentration of available follicles and results that look most natural. Unfortunately, not every person can make use of this option due to tight scalps that do not accommodate many follicles or existing balding patterns elsewhere on their head that prevent this option from being chosen as a donor site.

Transplant procedure

Hair transplantation involves extracting healthy hairs from the top of your head and moving them to areas that are balding or thinning. A surgeon may use several techniques to prepare your scalp, such as shaving the area or using a laser device; local anesthesia will then be injected into your scalp to alleviate pain; alternatively sedation or numbing agents may be administered as well.

Your doctor will mark the areas requiring transplanted hairs, then take steps to extract a strip of skin from behind your head (known as the donor site). 

They then employ surgeons and their assistants employ robotics to divide this strip of skin into between 500 to 2,000 fragments containing one or more hair follicles. You can visit SierraRobotic.com to learn more. This precision means that the results are incredibly effective.

Grafts are then carefully placed in areas of your scalp where hair loss has taken place or where volume or thickness needs to be added, where they will gradually grow in. Although grafts cannot create new locks, they will add volume and thickness to existing locks, improving volume retention rates. With proper care, survival rates for grafts typically range between 90%-100%.

Once your grafts have been surgically placed, they will be covered with surgical dressings or staples and given post-surgery care instructions from your physician to help heal properly. Be sure to strictly abide by them to avoid complications like scarring.

After surgery, patients often need analgesics and antibiotics for several days following. You can click here to learn more about analgesics. Some may experience discomfort that can be alleviated with over-the-counter drugs like paracetamol or ibuprofen; anxiolytic medications, like alprazolam may also be taken in order to manage anxiety if necessary.

Your grafts may take several months to take root and start producing hair growth; however, most patients see new growth within a year of surgery. Over the following year, your new hair will continue to thicken until it reaches your desired volume.

Recovery

A hair transplant surgery requires careful recovery and may cause some discomfort; over-the-counter pain medications may help alleviate it. You will likely receive specific instructions from your surgeon regarding when and how to take postoperative care steps, so make sure that these directives are strictly abided by so your grafts heal effectively.

After receiving a hair transplant, the initial days can often be very uncomfortable as transplanted grafts will develop scabbing on both donor and recipient areas of your scalp. 

It is important not to scratch this sensitive area while using special shampoo and foam offered by your clinic to help remove scabs; additionally, washing your hair daily until all scabs have been completely eliminated should also help ease discomfort.

Over time, your transplanted follicles will begin to shed naturally due to your body responding to them and transitioning them into resting phase (telogen). Even though this occurs, rest assured that these healthy follicles remain.

At this point, it is common for your native hairs to outgrow those transplanted ones; this is likely due to your natural ones having a faster growth cycle and being able to catch up more quickly than the transplanted ones. But don’t fret over this; eventually things should even out.

By the second month after your transplant, you should begin to notice that the transplanted follicles have begun to regrow – this signals they have moved out of the resting phase and into active growth mode. Their development should gradually accelerate over the following three months.

By the fourth and fifth months, your new hairs should have reached full growth cycle – meaning they’re growing at their normal pace – making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between transplanted and native hairs.

After six and seven months, your hair should continue to grow at its usual rate and thicken – giving an indication of its final results from your transplant procedure.

Results

As soon as you undergo a hair transplant, patience must be exercised while waiting for results. At first, transplanted hair may appear sparse but that is normal and an indicator that new follicles have begun growing – this process typically takes six months – after which your transplanted locks should thicken up and can be styled normally again.

Hair transplantation not only restores lost hair but can also minimize scars from prior procedures. For example, if you underwent hair plug surgery before, its scar would remain visible on your scalp; but today’s advanced technology makes it possible to use follicular units of healthy hair to cover these scars from previous procedures.