How Does A Hair Transplant Work?

There are a few different methods for hair transplants, by far the most common in the UK is FUE transplant surgery which stands for Follicular Unit Extraction, which can basically be thought of as taking out and moving the hair follicles one at a time. An older method known as FUT exists which we do not offer, as it's considered rather barbaric now as it involved cutting a strip of skin out of your head from an area with hair, then cutting the strip up into bits to take the hairs out. That method leaves a nasty scar, unlike FUE which doesn't leave a noticeable scar, so we will focus on the newer FUE method, as it's something we are experts at.

So back to the question... A hair transplant involves taking a hair from one place on your body that we call the donor area and implanting it into another area on your body. It does need to be your own hair - see where do they get the hair from in a hair transplant or your body would reject it and the hair would not grow.

 

It's done under local anaesthetic so you are wide awake, takes anywhere from 5-7 hours depending on how many hair follicles are moved, and you will need around 10 days recovery time to heal afterwards. 

 

The best analogy is moving a plant in your garden - you have to dig the plant up carefully to avoid damaging the root, dig a little hole where you want it to go, then plant it in the hole.  A hair transplant is a similar idea, just done with potentially thousands of hairs so it can take a while.

First stage is each hair is extracted individually and needs the donor area shaved to stubble length - see Do I need to shave my head for a hair transplant? Imagine a tiny apple-corer about 0.7 - 0.8mm wide that goes down over an individual bit of stubble, cuts around it and extracts it including the root. It's important to note that as we are taking the whole hair including the root, it will not regenerate in the location it is taken from, so you don't grow a new hair to replace it. This isn't a problem for most people kas we typically only need around 10-20% of the total hair the donor area, and we select the hairs spread over as wide an area as possible so that we don't leave any empty patches, so the overall effect is just a slightly thinned out area that isn't noticeable. It does mean you cannot have infinite hair transplants though, most people with a healthy donor area may have enough hairs to do 2-3 transplants if needed, and part of the consultation is assessing this.

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The second part of the surgery is considered the most important to the final result, the surgeon makes little channels into your skin for where he wants the new hairs to go. These have to be the right distance apart, ideal density is around 30-40 grafts per square cm depending on your hair thickness and type, the surgeon also has to get the correct depth into the skin to reach the lower dermal layers so the hair reconnects to your blood supply, and also the correct angle, as whatever angle the channel is made into your skin that's the angle the new hair will grow out at, so the surgeon needs to match the angle of your existing hair with the angle of your new hair so it all grows in the same direction depending on where on your head it is.

 

The final part is probably the easiest part - the hair grafts are placed into the channels one at a time, just like planting a tiny plant with a pair of tweezers. Once all the hairs are in then it's all inspected, the donor area is bandaged up and you can go home.

 

Recovery time is initially around 10-12 days for the grafts to be healed safely under the skin, then a few more weeks for any skin tenderness to go. The initial hairs that are growing out of the transplanted follicles usually shed in the first 2-4 weeks, it takes around 3-4 months for the new hairs to start to grow, and slowly the area gets thicker and fuller, usually taking around 12 months for the final result.

If you are considering a hair transplant, then start by arranging a free consultation with us at My-Hair UK by clicking the button below for a confidential chat with an expert.

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