The biggest fear for people is the fear of the unknown. What happens during a hair transplant procedure is an unknown for a lot of people so we will break down the day of the procedure in this post.
Contents
Overview
- A hair transplant procedure typically lasts between 5 and 8 hours.
- There are 3 stages during the procedure. These are the extraction, incision and implantation stages. This excludes the consultation, lunch break and discharge.
Arrival at the Clinic
The day begins by the patient arriving at one of the clinics at around 8:30-9am. This information is sent to you via our email system and is determined by the location and hair loss type/size as to what time you should arrive.
You will be greeted by the clinic staff members and surgery team. They will ask you to take a seat and wait in reception. Once the procedure room is ready, one of the surgical team will come to get you and take you into the consultation room where you can leave any items that you have brought with you and wait for the doctor to come in.
The Consultation
The first step before any hair transplant surgery is to have a quick pre-surgery consultation with the doctor. You will be asked to sign some consent forms and your blood pressure will be taken to make sure that it’s at a safe level. After this, depending on the area of the transplant, the design will be done with a surgical marker pen to drawn on the areas to be implanted. The head will typically get shaved in order for the surgical team to have a clear “line of sight” of the recipient area and the donor area. Sometimes the donor area will be marked with the pen in order to be separated out as sections/compartments for extraction.
Once this has been done, the surgical team will take you into the surgery room and administer the local anaesthetic (typically lidocaine/bupivacaine and adrenaline – also known as epinephrine – are used in the mix) in order to numb the donor area ready for extraction.
Phase 1) Extraction
During this phase, as you can see in the video, the doctor uses a micro punch machine (typically 0.75mm to 0.85mm in diameter) in order to start the extraction of the grafts from the donor area to be used later on in the recipient area. These grafts are used because they don’t get affected by the hormone DHT (this causes hair loss) like the top of the head does.
If doing an eyebrow transplant, then a smaller area will get shaved at the back only for extraction. The rest of the hair above will fall over this area to cover it and the whole density of the back of the head will be so that it doesn’t show.
As the doctor is making these small “punch holes” with the machine, one of the team of technicians uses serrated angled forceps in order to extract those grafts from the donor area. This process continues until the final number of grafts have been extracted. In the meantime another team of the technicians separates the extracted grafts and groups them into grafts with 1,2,3,4+ follicles.
This process takes around 2-3 hours depending on number of grafts required to be extracted which is based on the size of the surface area of hair loss.
Lunch Break
After the extraction has taken place, a lunch break of around 20 mins or so is taken where you go back in the consultation room and eat lunch that is provided. You can also answer any messages/emails and general check up on your phone if you wish. In the meantime the counting, separating and grouping of your grafts is done in the procedure room. Once lunch has finished, its then time to move onto the next phase.
Phase 2) Incisions
The doctor will take you into the procedure room and administer local anaesthetic again in the recipient area just like previously in the donor area in order to numb the area so that you feel no pain. You will then be lay down facing forward at a 45 degree angle roughly on the medical bed. There is a TV screen opposite where you can watch Netflix.
The incisions usually take around 1 hour or so and are performed by the doctor in the recipient area. The incisions are an important part of a hair transplant as they set the “angle of approach” so to speak that acts as a “template/blueprint” so to speak for implantation.
Phase 3) Implantation
As soon as the incisions are completed, the doctor will call in the team of technicians. The technicians will then begin implanting the grafts that they had prepared previously after the extraction phase into the channels made by the doctor. They use angled non serrated implanting forceps to match the direction that the incision has been made in. This is one of the key areas of hair transplant.
Depending on the number of follicles to be implanted and their location, implantation usually takes around 2-3 hours. Once the implantation is completed, you are bandaged up with a large bandage around the donor area secured with micropore tape along with a head band across the top of the head in order to control the swelling that occurs after a hair transplant.
Discharging You
Once all of the above is completed, you will go back into the consultation room in order to collect all of your belongings and have the hair transplant aftercare instructions given to you as well as the aftercare bag of goodies. The doctor will run through the instructions to make sure you understand everything. The aftercare bag is also provided and contains:
- Inflatable travel pillow – you need to sleep in an upright position so that your donor area and recipient area aren’t accidentally injured when sleeping for the first 3-5 days.
- Shampoo – this is the special type of shampoo that we instruct you to use on your first wash and subsequent washes in the first 2 weeks after the procedure.
- Sponge – to help with the non-contact washing of the hair in the first few days.
- Spray bottle with saline solution – in order to spray the recipient area every 30 mins – 1 hour when awake for the first couple of days.
- Savlon – sometimes given to be applied onto the donor area ONLY to help with healing.
- Antibiotics – sometimes given in order to help prevent any potential infections.
- Paracetamol – in order to help with pain relief for the first couple of days post procedure.
Once you have the above, the doctor will ask you to sign the discharge form and put down the time you were discharged from the clinic. You are then free to go back home to rest and recover where the next 14 days play an important part in the healing and “bedding in” of the transplanted grafts.
