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Completely natural, life long hair restoration is now available with the development of state-of-the-art techniques such as Follicular Unit Transplantation. The tufted, "pluggy look" of yesteryear has been consigned to history and your hairdresser will not even notice your micrograft hair transplant.
Follicular Unit Transplantation involves the transfer of small skin grafts containing naturally occurring groups of hairs each from the lower, permanent hair-bearing scalp (the donor area) to the balding scalp. It is performed under local anaesthetic with minor sedation. Initially a strip of skin is removed and the donor area closed by dissolving sutures.
The strip is dissected into small skin grafts using operating microscopes and then meticulously planted into the bald or thinning areas of the scalp (recipient area). The creation of very small micrografts (also called follicular unit grafts) allows very natural, feathered hairlines to be created avoiding the abrupt hairline of previous techniques.
A new technique of micrograft removal involves removing the micrografts one at a time from the donor area. This technique, follicular unit extraction (FUE), may be useful in some patients requiring only a small number of micrografts.
The number of grafts used depends on the size of the area to be transplanted and density required by the patient. It may be as few as 300 (eg.for eyebrows) but usually there is between 500 - 2500 per procedure for balding. Most patients require 2 - 3 procedures to achieve satisfactory density.
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In some cases involving continued hair loss, more procedures can be performed later (depending on the amount of remaining donor hair). Within 24 hours small crusts form on each graft which shed in approximately 7-10 days. Bandaging is not required. The grafted hairs usually commence growing in 6-15 weeks and grow at the normal rate of 1cm per month. The success rate is extremely high with over 90% survival of grafted hairs. These transplanted hairs will not shrink and thin because of their genetic programming.
In addition to medical skill, the artistic ability of the surgeon is vital in determining the placement and angling of the grafts to achieve the most natural result. The positioning and shaping of the hairline is crucial and is decided by mutual agreement between the patient and surgeon.
Follicular Unit Transplantation is also a very useful procedure to cover up scalp scarring from trauma, burns or previous surgery. In particular, the technique is extremely helpful for patients with scarring or hairline distortion from face-lift surgery or brow-lift surgery in both men and women. |
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