The Hair Transplant Procedure
Congratulations! Now that you’ve decided to live life with a full head of hair, let’s chat about what you can expect during your hair transplant procedure or Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) procedure, as it is known in medical circles.
Since you will be anesthetized, there are a few pre-operative issues we need to discuss. Since hair transplant or follicular unit transplant is a surgical procedure, your doctors will provide very specific instructions for you, follow their advice.
Let me just share my pre-surgery experience. I could not eat or drink anything after midnight the night prior to surgery. My doctor also asked if I was anxious about the procedure. If my doctor thought necessary, a mild sedative would have been prescribed. And of course, your doctor may vary these fairly standard pre-operation surgical routines. You will also most likely meet with another doctor, an anesthesiologist.
Most people think anesthesia means you are being “put to sleep”. Many times a hair transplant patient will be anesthetized with a local anesthetic. The most common ones used are lidocaine and bupivicane, and many times are used in conjunction with each other. Lidocaine acts very quickly to deaden the hair transplant area and bupivicane last a bit longer. These are injected to totally numb the scalp, and maybe injected around several large nerve clusters near the hair transplant area. Once the lidocane is injected, the area begins to become numb. Once your scalp is completely numb the surgery will begin.
You may be wondering exactly what the team of doctors will be doing. There are basically two teams, let‚s call them the FUT prep team, and the FUT surgery team. The FUT surgery team harvests a strip of skin containing healthy hair follicles and passes it on to the FUT prep team.
The FUT prep team begin the ’slivering’ process or dividing the strip in to portions only about one hair follicle wide and placing them into a chilled saline bath until ready for implanting. During this time the FUT surgical team is creating recipient sites for the hair follicles. This is normally accomplished with small needles. After creating exactly the number of sites for the number of hair follicles, the careful process of implanting begins.
Ever so gently and while looking through a stereoscopic microscope, the surgeon grasps the hair implants with very small forceps, and very carefully places them into the awaiting site. The surgeon places them in at a very precise angle, and depth.
As a precaution, the surgeons complete a final check of the implanted hairs and surrounding scalp areas. They are looking for signs of follicular units being displaced during the post-surgical cleansing. After the procedure, (and most likely during surgery as well,) the doctors give very specific instructions to ensure the hair transplanted has the best possible chance of growing. Be sure to follow your doctor’s instructions.
