New York Hair Transplant Specialist

The results from a hair transplant are long lasting. The patient, over their lifetime, will always have more hair than they otherwise would have had. That being said, the pre-existing hair in the region will continue to thin and – at a much slower rate – so will the transplanted hair. The hair that is transplanted is taken from a region of the scalp much less affected by the process of androgenetic hair loss. Thus those hairs will shed at a rate much slower than those naturally occurring in the affected region. This is the main reason why hair transplants have been effective in treating androgenetic hair loss. It is important to try to slow this future loss with adjuvant therapy, which may include medical therapy, hormone therapy or PRP.

Yes. When a hair transplant is performed carefully and with attention to detail, the surgery increases the density of hair in the area treated. Hair is removed from the permanent donor area and moved to an area with hair loss. The transplanted hair will behave in this new region, as it would have in its original location. To be clear, this hair is “relatively permanent” in that it will gradually thin as a person ages, but will not disappear completely. Thus, the effects of the hair transplant are long lasting.

Of course, there are situations that can result in an unsuccessful transplant: poor planning by the surgeon with respect to the blood supply and density of sites, poor dissection technique by technicians, sub-optimal storage of the grafts outside the body and/or traumatic graft placement. Modern transplant surgery utilizes very small grafts, which are especially vulnerable. Therefore it is particularly important to be certain that the surgeon performing the hair transplant is well-trained and has a similarly excellent staff of technicians, who have the training and time to prepare and place the grafts with the utmost care.

Most patients find the hair transplant very easily tolerated. It hurts approximately the same as a dental procedure. However, patients have different levels of tolerance for pain (and pain medication) – thus it is difficult to say “yes” or “no”. Most patients report that the procedure is mildly uncomfortable. The initial injections to numb the surgical areas do sting a little. The numbing medication usually last the entire day or is reinforced at intervals to maintain complete anesthesia. Each office is different in terms of the level of anesthesia they can provide. Our office is certified by the Joint Commission and thus we regularly administer light sedation for our patients over the day. We also provide intravenous analgesia (pain control) that lasts through the post-operative period. We dispense pain medication to all our patients at the end of the day. These are taken as needed – and as previously mentioned, some patients need this medication while others are quite comfortable with Tylenol.

Overall patients do find the sutures after a strip harvest more uncomfortable than the generalized “razor burn” sensation after an FUE procedure. Neither procedure is pain-free. We do our very best to provide our patients with excellent pain control measures and virtually every patient is surprised at the ease with which they tolerate the surgery.

Patients having hair transplant surgery should ideally take 7-10 days away from work and social activities if they want to keep the procedure confidential. In most cases, this amount of time is actually more than necessary. However, if you have planned to return to work after 3-4 days and you happen to be one of the patients with more swelling or bruising than the average patient, it can become a very awkward situation. Usually, the first surgery is a good indicator of future healing, thus your schedule can be adjusted for subsequent surgeries. Obviously, patients with more pre-existing hair and those working posterior to the frontal hair line will have an easier time camouflaging the area during the post-operative period. Here is a PDF of our post-operative directions, it may help answer further questions (although these are not uniformly followed by all doctors in the field).

The answer to this question is somewhat complicated. Briefly, PRP may be helpful, but there are limited clinical studies to determine how effective PRP can be in the treatment of hair loss. To make matters even less clear, one doctor’s PRP treatment may be very different from another doctor’s. Thus studies performed in different clinics cannot necessarily be compared to one another nor can the data be collated to provide a more complete picture.

We’ve been using PRP in the practice for over 15 years. The technique and applications have evolved over that time. There are many patients who have seen regrowth of hair and a slowing of their loss. However, not everyone has positive results from PRP and there is no clear information to allow us to differentiate between those that are more or less likely to respond. Our office, in conjunction with Cornell, is currently doing retrospective studies to try to further clarify the answer to this question.