HAIR TRANSPLANT
What To Do After Your Hair Restoration Surgery
The night of your hair transplant, and for the next few nights afterwards, you are encouraged to sleep with your head elevated on pillows. Medication is given for sleep and pain (if needed). The morning after your hair transplant surgery, you will remove the headband and shower and shampoo your scalp every four hours – just for the first day. We’ll call you the next day to make sure that everything is OK.
For the remainder of the week, you should shower twice a day. When showering, you will be instructed to gently clean the transplanted area with a special shampoo. The follicular unit grafts are made to fit snugly into the recipient sites and will not be dislodged in the shower, if you follow the instructions given to you. After your first shower, no further bandages are required.
Although you must be very gentle for the first week, normal shampooing, brushing and hair care can be resumed after two weeks since, by this time, the grafts are firmly in place. You can also have a haircut at this point. You are able to dye your hair, if you choose, four weeks after the hair transplant.
You should avoid alcohol for three days following your hair replacement procedure and abstain from smoking for two weeks. When in strong sunlight, you should wear a hat. After two weeks you may use a sunscreen with a SPF of 30+.
Generally patients can resume normal daily routine almost immediately. Limited exercise can be started in the first week. You should avoid strenuous exercise for several weeks following hair restoration surgery, depending upon the type of donor incision and the laxity of your scalp. We ask you to return to the office for a one week follow-up visit, but for those who live at a distance from our facilities, this can generally be handled by phone.
What To Expect After Your Hair Transplant Surgery
If the post-operative instructions are followed carefully, in most patients, the transplant is minimally detectable after a few days and almost undetectable after the first week to ten days. Patients are given medication for swelling at the time of surgery, but some still experience swelling of the forehead that settles across the bridge of the nose and around the eyes. If this occurs, it is almost always gone by the end of the first week.
The newly transplanted hair begins to grow at around 10 weeks. It is long enough to be groomed in about 6 months and, in most cases, will be fully grown in at one year. In the few months following a transplant, before the new hair starts to grow, there may be some shedding of your original hair so that the transplanted area may temporarily appear slightly thinner. This is a transient phenomenon and will be corrected when the new hair begins to grow. It should not be a cause for concern.
The following table describes the usual course for persons having Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) where indicated. There will generally be significant person to person variability, so if you do not follow the course exactly, do not be concerned.
The night of your hair transplant, and for the next few nights afterwards, you are encouraged to sleep with your head elevated on pillows. Medication is given for sleep and pain (if needed). The morning after your hair transplant surgery, you will remove the headband and shower and shampoo your scalp every four hours – just for the first day. We’ll call you the next day to make sure that everything is OK.
For the remainder of the week, you should shower twice a day. When showering, you will be instructed to gently clean the transplanted area with a special shampoo. The follicular unit grafts are made to fit snugly into the recipient sites and will not be dislodged in the shower, if you follow the instructions given to you. After your first shower, no further bandages are required.
Although you must be very gentle for the first week, normal shampooing, brushing and hair care can be resumed after two weeks since, by this time, the grafts are firmly in place. You can also have a haircut at this point. You are able to dye your hair, if you choose, four weeks after the hair transplant.
You should avoid alcohol for three days following your hair replacement procedure and abstain from smoking for two weeks. When in strong sunlight, you should wear a hat. After two weeks you may use a sunscreen with a SPF of 30+.
Generally patients can resume normal daily routine almost immediately. Limited exercise can be started in the first week. You should avoid strenuous exercise for several weeks following hair restoration surgery, depending upon the type of donor incision and the laxity of your scalp. We ask you to return to the office for a one week follow-up visit, but for those who live at a distance from our facilities, this can generally be handled by phone.
What To Expect After Your Hair Transplant Surgery
If the post-operative instructions are followed carefully, in most patients, the transplant is minimally detectable after a few days and almost undetectable after the first week to ten days. Patients are given medication for swelling at the time of surgery, but some still experience swelling of the forehead that settles across the bridge of the nose and around the eyes. If this occurs, it is almost always gone by the end of the first week.
The newly transplanted hair begins to grow at around 10 weeks. It is long enough to be groomed in about 6 months and, in most cases, will be fully grown in at one year. In the few months following a transplant, before the new hair starts to grow, there may be some shedding of your original hair so that the transplanted area may temporarily appear slightly thinner. This is a transient phenomenon and will be corrected when the new hair begins to grow. It should not be a cause for concern.
The following table describes the usual course for persons having Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) where indicated. There will generally be significant person to person variability, so if you do not follow the course exactly, do not be concerned.
POST-OP |
THE TRANSPLANTED AREA |
THE DONOR AREA |
||
| The Day Following Surgery | Patients are instructed to wash their hair gently, but thoroughly, so that the scalp is free of any blood | Expect some soreness, and possibly some numbness. There will be some oozing in the donor area. | ||
| Days 2-3 | Moderate redness may be present. Scabs present. Some swelling may appear on the forehead. | Soreness in the donor area begins to disappear. Some numbness may continue. There is generally no discomfort in the recipient area. | ||
| Days 4-6 | If there is significant swelling, it may settle across the bridge of the nose and around the eyes and cheeks. | In the donor area only, any residual crusting can be removed with directly running shower water. | ||
| End of Week 1 | Swelling usually has subsided. Redness is faint or absent. The hair transplants look and feel like a week-old beard. Patients are seen in follow-up. | Soreness is generally gone. With FUE, the donor area is usually healed. | ||
| Day 10 | Grafts are firmly in place. Any residual crusting may be gently scrubbed off. | |||
End of Week 2 |
The grafts are permanently in place and cannot be dislodged. The transplanted hair begins to be shed. Patients may return to normal shampooing, brushing and combing and may get haircuts. | Numbness is uncommon | ||
| End of Week 3 | The majority of the transplanted hair has been shed. | |||
| End of Month 1 | The follicles enter a resting phase. You will look very much like you did before the procedure. Patients may dye their hair. | |||
| Months 2-5 | The newly transplanted hair starts to grow, initially as very fine hair. Some or all of the original hair that was shed begins to grow back. | |||
| Months 6-9 | Hair is groomable, but it continues to grow and thicken. Slight textural changes in hair are occasionally present. | |||
| Month 9 | Patients are seen in follow-up. If a second session is considered, it will be discussed. | |||
| 1 Year | The final appearance of the hair transplants can begin to be appreciated. | |||
| 2 Years | There may be additional fullness. Any textural change in hair usually returns to normal. |