Tampa Hair Transplants

Immediately after your hair transplant procedure you should notice some swelling, bruising and scabs that have formed. This is totally normal and it should go away completely in as few as two days. It’s usually a good idea to take these days off work if possible to give your body lots of energy to devote to the healing process.

If your scalp starts to feel tight or itchy, this is completely normal and it will go away in time. Just try to resist the urge to scratch as much as possible. Be aware that immediately after your surgery you will need someone to drive you home safely – driving on sedatives is not recommended under any circumstances.

After this phase, all of your precious, new, implanted hair will fall out, leaving you looking exactly the same as you did before. This is also completely normal and it’s what’s known as ‘thermal shock’. This is because the hair follicles die during the very rough procedure. However, this leaves the hair’s stem cells perfectly intact, ready to sprout beautiful, new hairs in their place. Then, a few cycles of hair loss and shedding will take place which can have quite a toll on people’s emotions. This is all to be expected however so don’t fret too much.

Your surgeon will no doubt have given you a post-care regimen to follow which would include antibiotics, scalp-cleaning techniques and any follow-up consultations that need to take place:

• For the first few nights you will need to sleep in an upright position so use pillows or construct an upright bed if necessary.
• Make sure you do not drink any alcohol for the first two days after your surgery.
• Don’t smoke cigarettes for a month afterwards. Even better would be to give up. Smoking is terrible for circulation and even worse for hair growth.
• Sometimes a growth spray is prescribed which you need to use on your head to promote hair growth. This must be done every half hour for the first day.
• Only after a few days will you be able to shampoo and clean your head. Then you need to repeat it every few days.
• Avoid playing any sports for the first week.
• If you were given antibiotic cream, make sure you apply this twice a day for a week.
• Avoid any sun during the healing process or wear a cap.

This is the best way to make sure your healing process is swift and your hair grows back with vigor.

When people hear the phrase ‘hair transplants’, they immediately picture those ugly, really obvious-looking plugs that are planted in straight rows and are clearly not real. We’ve all seen them and many jokes have been made about them. Little does the general public know however, that hair transplant technology has come a really long way in the last ten years since that technology was on the cutting-edge. There have been countless thousands of small innovations that have lead to the procedure becoming extremely efficient, undetectable, natural-looking and best of all, permanent.

After plugs had their best days behind them, the next popular procedure was to cut a strip of hairs in one piece out of the donor site (usually the back of the head) and to slice this strip of hairs and scalp into each individual hair and follicle. Then each of these hairs would then be placed into tiny holes that were made for them in the recipient area (the bald spots).

Well things have changed immensely since then.

Now we have really amazing machines that allow an operator to remove these hairs from the donor site individually and then place them in the bald spots by shooting them in under high pressure. Now there are no more scars from a linear strip being taken out, incisions, long recovery times or pain. This new breed of procedure is known as FUE or follicular unit extraction and is done under a local anesthetic. The recovery time for the scabs is just a few days with real hair growth results visible within 6 months. The final results should be clear after a year.

Since the hairs are not taken as a strip from the back of the head, they can be taken out in an even distribution from the entire back of the head making the loss of hairs totally undetectable. The best part is, hair can even be taken from the arms, back, chest and armpits if necessary since there is obviously only so much donor hair available on the head. It’s not the cheapest procedure out there, but if you’re looking for real results that last and are undetectable, nothing even comes close to FUE. It’s just that simple.

This is the new breed of hair transplant surgery and the results and cost will only get better in the next few years. It’s a truly exciting time to be a balding man!

Contrary to popular belief, hair loss is not something that is restricted to men only. Up to 30% of women will experience hair loss at some point in their lives and transplants offer a great option for treatment. Women can experience hair loss for a number of reasons ranging from stress, menopause, thyroid problems, traction alopecia, telogen effluvium, medication, diet or hormone imbalances.

For women, the single-most common root cause for hair loss is from hormones. Hormonal imbalances can wreak havoc on one’s hair and thinning is often the end result. Some of these imbalances only cause temporary loss however and shouldn’t be a major cause for concern. In cases like these the hair usually returns to normal after some time as if nothing happened.

The only difference between the hair loss that men and women experience is the fact that women do not get a loss pattern. Their hair loss is usually quite diffuse and spread out all over the scalp, with the frontal hairline still present and unaffected, making the effect much-less obvious. This is one of the major reasons why hair loss in women is not as recognized.

Hair thinning in women can be even more psychologically devastating than it is for men. A large part of a woman’s sex appeal and confidence comes from their hair, and when this starts disappearing, so does their self-esteem in many cases. At least for men, the phenomenon of balding is well-known. While still not exactly welcomed it’s at least an accepted phenomenon. For women however, it’s considered rare and there is an even larger stigma attached to it which can make women feel judged.

For women, hair loss is more of a gradual process than for men with the effect snowballing during menopause as well as pregnancy.  Women are unlucky in the sense that drug manufacturers have almost completely ignored them with their products and all their marketing considerations are aimed at men. However, they are lucky in the sense that it is quite rare for women to experience total hair loss or bald patches like men do. Women can very easily disguise their thinning with certain hairstyles and hair extensions.

One of the most effective treatments for women with advanced hair loss is called FUT or follicular unit transplantation. This allows a thinning scalp to have complete restoration and is a major breakthrough in the industry.

Good quality hair transplant surgery can result in a totally natural-looking head of hair with no nasty side-effects or tell-tale signs of obvious work. Of course, the more advanced your hair loss is, the less chance of complete restoration. But this has been mitigated in recent years by the introduction of advanced procedures like FUT and FUE which allow hair to be donated from areas such as the arms, back, chest, armpits or legs. This is not the transplant surgery of yesteryear: there are no plugs or scarring left behind and the only people who will know you had it done will be you and your family.

Other possible treatments include micrografts, minigrafts, scalp flaps, scalp reduction, direct hair transplantation and plugs. However, many of these are now considered totally outdated and have many side effects. Scalp flap surgery for example has the possibility to leave the patient looking strange and may even need plastic surgery to correct it after a few years. Plugs have become infamous for the ‘corn rows’ look and are clearly visible as fake hair. This is due to the hair being placed in tight clumps as opposed to individual hairs with a spaced-out arrangement. This is the nasty image most people associate with hair transplants.

These inferior techniques have all been replaced recently by what are now considered the ultimate procedures for hair transplants – FUT and FUE. These allow individual hairs from the donor site to be placed in the recipient site permanently. Donor hairs are usually taken from the back of the head and placed on top in a randomized fashion to avoid any linear patterns. This results in real hair in the previously bald patches that looks completely real and genuine. They are even harvested at the correct angle to ensure the natural direction of one’s hairs remain normal. This will result in the ability to style one’s hair any way you choose.

Since the hairs are taken out individually there is no scarring left behind or any long recovery period. Scabs will heal and fall off within days and the full effect of the transplants will be seen after 12 months. This is because the hair needs to re-grow so very little progress will be seen in the first few months. Many people get depressed around this time but it’s totally unnecessary and all that’s needed is a little patience to see it to the end of the first year where you will finally reap all the rewards.