The Procedure ( What to Expect From a Hair Transplant )

On the day of your hair transplant, we will numb your scalp using local anesthetics at the donor and recipient sites.

The donor area will be measured and trimmed slightly. A saline solution will be injected into the scalp making it easier to obtain and remove the necessary strips of tissue. The donor material is removed in the form of long strips of tissue using a single or multi-bladed scalpel (Just deep enough to include your living hair follicles).

Photo shows naturally occurring follicular clusters of 1, 2, 3, and 4 hairs. We move those cluster to the areas where you need more hair.

This donor tissue will be trimmed under magnification to prepare individual grafts. Follicular clusters are segregated in their normal 1,2,3,and 4 hair cluster/units. These grafts are then meticulously placed at the correct angle, direction and pattern of your original hair. Each Graft is carefully placed to allow enough blood to nourish every hair during the brief healing process (called recapilarization). Your donor area is closed with sutures or sometimes-surgical staples and then covered with a bandage.

There is usually some dried crusting blood for up to a week that will simply wash out after healing. Patients are back at work within a day or two.

More than 98% of follicular cluster/units survive and grow. You'll see hair follicles appear to be growing within a week. These are actually the hairs that had been growing prior to being relocated to the bald areas. Normally these old hair shafts will fall out (since most transplanted follicles go into the telogen or resting phase). Then about 90 days later they will start to grow new hairs! And...

At Last — Your Own, Permanent Natural Hair!

As you continue with the recommended treatment, your hair will look thicker, denser and totally natural. You can schedule another procedure whenever you wish without looking "under construction." Additional sessions can usually be done after four months. When the newly transplanted hair has begun to grow out. 

Since I want to give you an objective overview of Hair Restoration, let's discuss Assessing Donor Reserves. Each patient is limited by the quantity of donor hair available to relocate to the bald and thinning areas. Donor density and scalp laxity are the key factors in determining the total donor reserves for each patient. In other words, there's a limit to the number of follicular units that can be transplanted. That's why Dr. Garbutt takes precise measurements of the hair loss pattern and factors any potential future hair loss into your overall long-term surgical treatment plan. By using his artistic talent and surgical skills when distributing these follicles, he achieves excellent results each and every time.

Because he exclusively uses naturally-occurring follicular hair clusters of 1,2,3 and 4 hairs, any future hair loss will not result in unnatural appearing "islands" of transplanted hair.