How does a hair transplant work?

Hair replacement candidates must have healthy hair growth at the back and sides of the head to serve as donor areas. Donor areas are the places on the head from which grafts and flaps are taken. Other factors, such as hair color, texture and waviness or curliness may also affect the cosmetic result.

There are a number of techniques used in hair replacement surgery. Sometimes, two or more techniques are used to achieve the best results. Transplant techniques, such as micro-grafts, follicular unit transfer, and single unit transfers are generally performed on patients who desire a fuller, thicker head of hair.

In follicular unit hair transplantation, a donor strip of hair is harvested, excising a narrow strip of scalp from the donor area - an area at the back of the head that is resistant to hair loss. Each follicular unit from the donor strip contains one to four hair follicles. Under a microscope, the individual hairs are separated.

Follicular unit transfer can be combined with dense packing techniques in a megasession. Patients enjoy more dramatic results with less operations when these procedures are performed at a single sitting. As many as 2200 follicular units can be transferred in one megasession.

Follicular unit transplantation is an extremely efficient manner of hair restoration because several thousand hair grafts can be obtained from one small, thin donor strip. While follicular unit hair transplantation is very simple by principle, it takes an experienced surgeon, attention to detail, an artist's touch, and micro-surgical skills for the best implementation of this technique.