Why Doesn’t the Grafted Hair Fall Out?

Hair loss is considered a natural bodily process unless you shed over 50-100 hair strands every day. However, if you’ve had a hair transplant, it’s critical to distinguish between natural shedding and post-operative loss of implanted hair grafts. Hair loss can be caused by a variety of factors, such as genetics (which is often what leads to baldness or alopecia), sickness (like thyroid disease), and drugs.

What Causes Hair Loss Both Before and Following a Hair Transplant?

Female Pattern Baldness (Androgenetic Alopecia)

This disorder is similar to what men suffer, in addition to being the most frequent cause of female hair loss. It is also caused by hair shrinkage. Men, on the other hand, tend to suffer hair loss at the vertex and frontal hairline. Women, on the other hand, frequently keep their frontal hairline while losing thickness in the frontal of the scalp.

Male Pattern Baldness (Androgenetic Alopecia)

It is the most frequent type of male hair loss. DHT, a hormone, prompts hair follicles to decrease in men who have male-pattern baldness. These follicles ultimately shrink to a point where hair cannot develop in them. It is distinguished by scalp hair shrinkage, in which strong terminal hairs are substituted with finer, thinner replicas of themselves.

Hair Loss Before Hair Transplant

Hair grows and sheds in a cycle that includes the anagen, catagen, and telogen phases. This cycle is fully random, with a variable number of hairs in each phase at a given time. The anagen phase also referred to as the active stage of hair, lasts approximately 2-6 years. Hair grows roughly 1cm per 28 days throughout this phase. The catagen phase, also known as the ‘transitional stage,’ lasts about 2-3 weeks.

At any given moment, around 3% of the hairs are in this stage. The majority of shedding occurs during the telogen phase, often known as the ‘resting’ stage. Approximately 6-8 percent of the hairs can be in the telogen stage, which can last up to 100 days. During this period, up to 50-100, the hairs are shed.

Hair Loss Following a Hair Transplant

A hair transplant surgery involves the transportation and insertion of genetically resilient hairs from the donor site (at the rear of the head) to sections of the scalp without hair. Small openings, known as ‘stab incisions,’ are made into which the individual donors are inserted.

The process is strenuous for the surrounding hair and scalp, resulting in transient graft and existing hair shedding. This is known as ‘effluvium,’ and it is also called shock loss. It is normal and expected for hair grafts to shed after a hair transplant, which can happen anywhere from 1 to 5 weeks after the treatment. They eventually grow back a few months following the operation.

Shock loss is a typical phase of the hair regeneration process and does not indicate permanent hair damage. It is inescapable, but it is also transitory. New hair takes time to develop and grows at varying speeds.

How To Minimize Hair Loss Following a Hair Transplant

Medications

Treatments such as finasteride or minoxidil can help minimize post-surgical hair loss, however, it is always best to visit a doctor first. Based on your specific situation, a knowledgeable physician will be competent to propose one of the two.

Camouflage Supplies

Patients may choose cosmetic camouflaging solutions to conceal the physical signs of hair thinning and shedding. These products conceal balding regions by giving density and bounce to the hair shafts, including hair-building fibers for broader coverage and volume, and using topical darkening to conceal bare places on the scalp.

Why Is the Grafted Hair Not Falling Out?

DHT Resistance in The Donor Area

The science of hair transplantation is straightforward. Hair is taken from the “safe zone” and transferred to balding spots. A safe zone is a region of the scalp in which the hair is immune to Dihydro, a hormone that promotes hair loss. For many pattern baldness victims, hair only thins out on the crown or top of the head, leaving the sides unaffected by hair loss. The transplant’s outcomes will improve if the donor region is thicker.

This region is abundantly filled with tough hair. The abundance of remaining hair is thick enough to make up for the transplanted hair when a donor is taken from this location to be used elsewhere. Due to the density in this location, many patients may require repeated hair transplants throughout their lives.

How Long Is It Going to Last?

The lifespan of transplanted hair from the safe zone is the same as if the hair had stayed in the back of the head, which is often a lifetime. Not everyone possesses a safe zone. Diffuse hair loss is a problem that affects some people. Diffuse hair loss happens when hair loss happens all over the scalp. Hair transplantation is not an alternative for persons who have diffuse hair loss since the ‘donor hair’ is not certain to last long.

Donor Dominance

Donor dominance relates to autografts that retain their original properties (e.g., growth pace, texture, anagen period) following transplantation to a new site, regardless of the recipient site’s qualities. Since the phrase was coined by Dr. Norman Orentreich in 19591, it has remained the core principle behind the efficacy of hair transplant surgery for disorders such as cicatricial and androgenetic alopecia.

Individual hair follicles may be more or less susceptible to common processes that impact the hair, according to the theory of donor site dominance, which contends that hair follicle traits are kept throughout translocation. Given that they are hormonally resistant and that each hair follicle’s pigmentary capacity is genetically controlled, resulting in canities, donor occipital follicles are more resilient to the balding cycle.

What Occurs When a Hair Transplant Doesn’t Work?

If you still possess enough hair grafts in your donor location following a failed hair transplantation, you can get another hair transplant at least one year later to correct the problem. During the planning phase, you and your surgeon must be cautious because the second hair transplantation can be your final opportunity.