• Hair transplant surgery in men is most commonly performed for people with male pattern baldness or female pattern baldness. It is usually not recommended for people with diffuse hair loss. Individuals with thin or missing eyebrows, whiskers or beards are good candidates. As well as those with hair loss due to scarring, injury or previous surgery, they are also appropriate candidates. If the patient is 20 years old until age 70 and beyond.

The most common technique in hair transplant surgery today is known as Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) because of its main advantage which is the absence of a linear incision in the donor site. Instead, the individual follicular units are extracted one by one directly from the scalp. FUE is a somewhat more expensive procedure, but for most patients it represents a small additional investment to ensure the best long-term result and maximum satisfaction.When done correctly, FUE grafts have an excellent regrowth.

The other technique of hair transplantation is follicular unit grafting (FUT), sometimes called strip harvest or strip technique. With FUT, a strip from a single donor site, varying in length from 5 to 25 cm, of the scalp with hair is removed from the back or from the sides of the head. From this strip hundreds of more often several thousand small grafts containing one to three, sometimes four hairs each, are dissected. These grafts are implanted in small incisions of slit in the bald area or thinning where they can grow over several months just like normal hair. This procedure is typically performed with local anesthesia and oral sedation – although the occasional patient chooses twilight sedation, something we offer in our certified operating rooms – and can take three to eight hours to complete depending on the number of grafts involved.

In order to ensure an aesthetic result with any hair transplant, either FUE or FUT, the key step is the consultation. Good communication between you and your surgeon is essential. During your initial consultation, one of our board-certified plastic surgeons will ask you to explain what you expect from your hair transplant. Our surgeon will plan manufacturing of the recipient sites and determine the pattern, distribution and angle of hair growth to achieve the most natural aspect.
During the consultation, our specialist will develop a series of preoperative tests to check if the person is a good candidate, as well as being in good health conditions for the application of anesthesia in the capillary graft. In this sense, the anesthetist himself will be in charge of checking the patient’s medical history a few days in advance. The most common is that you practice an electrocardiogram in addition to advising on the type of anesthesia appropriate for your case. He will also explain the factors that can influence the procedure and the results. Your surgeon will also explain the technique and type of anesthesia you will use, the place where your surgery will be performed, the risks and costs involved, and any options you may have. Be sure to tell your surgeon if you have had any prior surgery or previous damage to your skull, even when it has been many years.
Do not hesitate to ask your doctor any questions or doubts you may have, especially if you have to do with your expectations and interests about the results.

At the time of undertaking the hair transplant procedure, the patient is given local anesthesia. In addition, this will be accompanied by a slight sedation. In this way, the person will not experience any pain during the intervention and will be completely calm and relaxed. In the worst case, the only thing you can feel is some tension in the scalp area. Once the hair transplant operation is completed, and thanks to the use of this local anesthetic, the patient can be discharged after a few hours.

• Hair transplantation in men is a surgical procedure that restores the hair to thin or bald areas of the scalp and, if desired, the beard, eyebrows and even the chest using the patient’s own hair. Hair can be taken from the back and / or sides of the scalp to serve as the donor’s hair, and in the occasional patient, the donor’s hairs come from the chest and / or beard. This hair is genetically programmed to be permanent and is not susceptible to the process of hair loss.

• During the first control, the healing is carefully removed, exposing the implanted area. On the other hand, and after 5 days, the first hair wash is allowed with a soft shampoo, ideally infantile so as not to detach the newly implanted follicles. The implanted hairs grow a few millimeters and fall off after 3-6 weeks, leaving the scalp balder. After 3 or 4 months, the new hair begins to grow, a development that can last from 8 to 16 months, ending on this date all the treatment. The final result should be observed a year and a half to have a good length and proper concentration of the implanted hair: This hair has a growth and firmness that is equivalent to normal hair. This hair implant can be repeated 2 or 3 times more if necessary, depending on the need to concentrate more the implants or the requirements of each patient’s result, in addition to the amount of the occipital area that gives hair implants.

• Postoperative care is very easy to perform, especially the care of the grafted area, the patient is told in detail how to perform cleaning and care at home. The patient can be reincorporated in his usual activities practically at 48-72 hours, taking into account all the care previously explained, since in the case of the strip he will have a small scar on the scalp or multiple extractions if the case of FUE, in addition to the micrografts in the receiving area. After the period of adaptation to the new area, which usually lasts between three and five months, the transplanted follicles generate the new hair and begin their external growth at a rate of approximately 1 centimeter per month.

• When hair transplant is performed by a qualified plastic surgeon, the complications are infrequent and commonly minor. However, there is always a possibility of complications, including pain (as in other interventions, you may suffer some pain after the operation. You can resort to analgesics to relieve it.); inflammation (keep in mind that the head is exposed for several hours, so you may experience a swelling. The best thing for this is to apply cold in the area.); infections (they are mild and occur superficially. To fix it, we usually recommend taking antibiotics to eradicate this type of problem.); fall of follicles (perhaps hundreds of follicles can fall some, this is not an infallible science. However, their number is usually not very high.) and telogenic effluvium (it consists in the sudden fall of the surrounding healthy hair that is in its final phase of the growth cycle. It happens in many contexts (pregnancy, illness, stress, etc.) and hair transplantation is one of them. In any case, this type of inconvenience is manifested in very few cases. The most common are facial edema, slight inflammation in the forehead area or between the eyebrows. This type of side effects are exhibited in only 5% of cases and are the result of the application of anesthesia in the hair transplant. Frequently, both edema and swelling tend to disappear after about 48 hours without the application of any type of medication or evidence of sequelae for the patient. In any case, in order to reduce both side effects, the patient is recommended to apply local cold or massage the area from the inflamed side. Another of the side effects is some loss of sensitivity in the area where the surgical wound is located. Neither should pose any problem for the patient, since, according to experts, this factor should disappear after about three or four weeks.

• Patients who undergo hair transplant are more or less well in a couple of days, are able to return to their usual activities in two to three days.

• After a short adaptation period (2-5 months) a normal and definitive hair growth will begin, maintaining the characteristics of the area from which they come. This means that after a few months you can have your desired look that you wished for.