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Any additional ways to stimulate hair growth post FUE?
I had 1500 grafts at the end of July and my hair is growing, but only certain hairs. I
was wondering when I will see hair growth in the areas between these seemingly dominant
hairs? And what I can do to help? I have been using Rogaine for a month now, with no result
yet, as expected. Not sure if this matters, but I wear a hat, a lot. I know that I am
probably jumping the gun, by asking this so early, but any comments will be very welcome.
Best Regards.
Thank you for your question!
It has been about 4 months since you had your hair transplant where you've gotten 1500 hairs
and your expressing your concern about the growth in between the dominant hairs and that
you've been using rogaine. It seems that you are nervous about where things are going or
whether things are going well.
First of all, in hair transplant surgery, there are a lot of factors to understand when
it comes to the anticipation of the amount of growth that you will have. But simply stated,
this is still very early in the course of your hair growth after transplant. In my practice,
even with a lot of advanced methods and hair regenerative technology that we employ, we
still say that the full result is approximately one year after the transplant. So let's understand
some of the things that are happening.
First of all, when hair is grafted, in other words whether it's FUE method or strip method,
you're literally taking the whole plant with its root and placing it in another place.
When this happens, there's something called shock loss that happens. Now shock loss can
describe the impact of the effect of swelling, trauma of actual surgery resulting in shedding
of the part of the hair. but the root of the hair or the dermal papillae and the complex
around it is intact. So therefore, after that shedding of the hair and this can apply to
both the grafts as well as existing hair that is adjacent to the area where you had the
transplant done, that can result in an area looking even more bare than it was prior to
the transplant and that naturally makes people nervous.
In our practice, one of our standard approaches of helping minimize that transition phase
has been the use of hair regeneration technology which we developed combining it with a material
called extracellular matrix derived from pig's bladder and platelet-rich plasma. The idea
is that with the advance regeneration technology, it appears from our clinical experience, that
the hair grafts tend to heal a little bit faster and the results starts to kick in or
starts growth a little bit sooner. In addition, it appears, not only we are protecting the
existing hairs from the shock loss or telogen effluvium, but in addition, we are also helping
these thinning hairs become thicker. And that's the real big distinction when it comes to
hair transplant surgery.
Hair transplant surgery is ultimately limited by the donor area, in terms of the number
of hairs you can place, as well as the area that is being treated in terms of how fast
is the existing hair going to thin out. So when we look at somebody for a hair transplant,
clearly that is a dominant thought and what we are able to do with hair regeneration is
address that thing very successful.
But as far as your question is concerned, I think it's very important that you speak
with your doctor or speak with your staff at your doctor's office. That is the most
common concerns people have. In our practice, we see our patients very frequently. Understanding
that even though full hair growth will not occur to its fullest extend until about a
year, it's important that we see our patients pretty every 3 months minimum and the door
is very much open for them to come in within that time frame. But we will also do microscopic
examinations and we will see how things are progressing so that the patient understands
that this is a natural process and ultimately, the success of the surgery will be determined
after approximately one year.
So for now, I think it's fine that you are using the minoxidil. There are some evidences
that a minoxidil topical will help move things alone or help synchronizing the hair growth
cycles but understanding that throughout the process, there are hairs that shed and hairs
that start to grow in until you reach that equilibrium somewhere at the 1 year point.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.