HOW HAIR TRANSPLANTS WORK
Follicular unit extraction (FUE) is the most common hair transplant surgery used worldwide and takes about seven to nine hours to perform. Surgeons use a dentist’s drill to harvest individual hair follicles from the scalp, then make tiny incisions on the bald spot in the direction in which the hair would naturally grow.
“We then take those little follicles containing one, two or three hairs and plant them into those little slits,” says specialist hair transplant surgeon Dr Larry Gershowitz.
Patients are awake during the procedure, but they are given a local anaesthetic to numb the pain.
Once the surgery is done, it takes three to four months for the follicle to generate new hair and up to 18 months for the hair to fully grow.
The hair that’s transplanted isn’t sensitive to testosterone, so there’s a 100% guarantee it will grow. Another transplant option is follicular unit transplantation (FUT). During this procedure, which takes around five to 10 hours, a tiny piece of the skin is removed, usually from the back of your head, containing hair follicles.
The hair follicles on the skin will then be removed and transplanted to cover the bald spots. The downside of this procedure is that it does leave a small scar on the back of the head.