Hair Transplant: Is It Safe and How Long Does it Last?

Unlike many cosmetic surgeries, which require you to pour money into visit after visit, hair transplants provide permanent results. While the effects are not immediate, after your hair transplant is successfully completed, you can expect strong, durable hair that looks natural because it is natural.

Don’t Fear Going Bald, Fix It!

Many men dread and fear going bald. But baldness is not a death sentence, and you can certainly fight back. With the help of modern technology and highly skilled surgeons’ men and women are eradicating baldness, one hair at a time.

There are many psychological and physical symptoms that men experience when going bald.

• Denial: The first psychological step in going bald is often denial. No one likes to go bald, and when men or women first begin to suspect they are going bald they think they are imagining it.
• Shame: Many also experience shame when going bald. This, of course, is irrational because going bald is not your fault. But there are things you can do about it—namely, hair transplant surgery.
• Depression or Anxiety: Finally, many get angry, depressed, or even experience social anxiety because of their baldness. If these feelings are familiar to you and are due in some part to baldness, you should consider hair transplant surgery.

Initial Hair Transplant

Some patients make the mistake of thinking that the hair they have transplanted is the same hair they are going to have long term. This is not, in fact, the case. The reason hair transplant surgeries work so well is that they effectively “seed” hair from one part of your scalp to another. The initial hair, however, will usually fall out within a few weeks. This is nothing to worry about! Why? Because your scalp has now been catalyzed into growing new, permanent hair.

Your new head of hair will begin to emerge soon after your hair transplant surgery but can take as long as six months to fully develop.

The beauty of hair transplant procedures, though, is that while the results are not immediate, they are permanent. The confidence hair transplants patients get from knowing that their new hair not only looks good, but is also durable, natural, and permanent is extraordinary.

Are Hair Transplants Safe?

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, yes, hair transplants are safe. Not only that, but today’s hair transplants also look incredibly natural. When the surgery first began to emerge in the 70s and 80s, it was seen as a hair loss breakthrough. The only problem was that the patient’s results did not look natural. Before, doctors were using “hair plugs,” which were larger swatches of hair that did not look nearly as good as what is available today.

Today there are two popular hair transplant procedures: Follicular Unit Excision and Follicular Unit Transplant. Both procedures are very safe and highly effective. The Follicular Unit Transplant requires a  slightly longer recovery time because a strip of actual tissue is removed from part of your scalp. even with the Follicular Unit Excision, the recovery time is very brief, and most patients are able to return to their lives and work in as little as a day.

There are a few things you need in order to qualify as a candidate for a hair transplant. The first is a scalp capable of growing hair. This is important because some scalps, even when seeded, cannot grow hair. And the next thing you need is the ability to grow hair in the donor area of your head. It wouldn’t make sense for doctors to remove hair from one part of your head and transplant it to another unless the donor location can regrow.

How Long Does a Hair Transplant Take?

There is a considerable difference in the amount of time a FUT hair surgery takes versus an FUE. To understand the difference, you must have a grasp of the different types of surgeries.

FUT hair surgery involves the removal of a small strip of tissue from either the back and or side of the scalp. The tissue is taken from this area because on the majority of heads, they are the most likely to retain healthy hair. The tissue is then segmented into small pieces and grafted onto the balding areas of the scalp. This process is safe, but is also time-consuming and requires the hand of an experienced surgeon. The reason the surgeon is so important in any type of hair transplant is not that the surgery itself is dangerous, but because there is a good deal of artistry involved in the process. A poorly-laid hairline or uneven grafts can create bad-looking results.

FUT hair surgery typically takes between 4-7 hours.

FUE surgery is more manual and takes more time. Unlike the FUT surgery, which takes many hairs all at once using grafts, the FUE method literally extracts individual hairs from parts of the scalp and seeds them using microscopic tools into balding areas. This results in no linear strip scarring, and the recovery time is minimized. The procedure itself, however, is very time consuming and can last as long as three, seven-hour sessions or more depending on how much work you need doing.

The most important thing when it comes to hair transplant surgery is quality. Why? Because hair transplants are permanent and, whether we like to admit it or not, our hair is one of the very first things that people see and judge about us. If you have an unusual hairline resulting from an inexperienced or unqualified hair transplant surgeon, you should reach out to experienced surgeons like those at the NHI Medical

Because of the time and manual labor involved, FUE surgery is typically more expensive than FUT hair surgery. However, the two are connected in that both serve certain use-cases better than the other. For example, if you only need small, sporadic patches of hair done, you may be better off with an FUE surgery, which can be more targeted and precise. If cost is a big factor for you and you have large areas of your scalp that need hair, then you might want to consider FUT surgery.