| Dr. Ronald P. Chao is a diplomat of the American Board of Hair Restoration Surgery. Here the Doctor has answered some of the common questions bizymoms visitors have about Hair transplant.
Q. Does hair transplant look Natural?
A. When done correctly and in the right hands, hair transplants will look completely natural. My surgical skills and artistry will ensure the best possible results.
Q. Are the clients kept conscious during the procedure?
A. All my hair transplants are generally performed as strictly elective outpatient surgery using only local anesthesia. No IV lines or general anesthesia is needed which makes the procedure much easier and safer than using more complicated and riskier anesthesia techniques. We do give valium to help relax the patients which may make some people sleepy, but the patient does not have to sleep if they don’t want to. We can give a little more valium if the patient wants to be on the sleepier side too, so it’s really up to the patient how awake they want to be.
Q. What are the types of hair transplants you perform?
A. My scope of practice typically includes a variety of hair transplants for females and males to bald or thinning head hair, eyebrows, and face (beards, mustaches for men, etc.). Some women have naturally high foreheads and want their hairline lowered to look more feminine. This can be accomplished through hair transplantation techniques also. I also do a lot of corrective surgery and scar revisions for patients who have had prior hair transplants with an outdated technique or just poor results from a prior procedure somewhere else.
Q. When can clients resume physical training?
A. I generally recommend patients to take it easy with physical exercise for the first week. Normal walking and everyday tasks involving no heavy lifting are generally okay even immediately after surgery. Patients may safely resume most exercises except for heavy lifting after a week. I tell my patients to be careful with heavy lifting for the first 3 weeks just to be safe.
Q. What is the difference between mini/micro grafting and follicular unit grafting?
A. Mini and micro grafts refer mainly to the number of hairs in the graft without respect to how the hairs grow out in nature, while follicular unit grafting refers to a graft which has kept its natural grouping. Hairs do not all grow as single hairs in nature but normally grow out in groups of 1, 2, or 3 with some occasionally slightly larger groupings. Sources vary, but generally micro grafts refer to any graft consisting of 1-3 hairs whereas mini grafts generally contain 3-6 or 8 hairs.
While mini grafts are an improvement over the old hair plugs which each contained up to 30 hairs or more, most mini grafts are still larger than most naturally occurring follicular units so they may not look as natural. While most follicular units have the same number of hairs as micrografts and thus by definition could be considered a type of micrograft, not all micrografts are follicular units. For example, if one tried to split a larger follicular unit into separate single hairs by hair splitting techniques, you would still have a micrograft but it would no longer be a follicular unit. Since hair in follicular units often grow out crossed with each other rather than perfectly parallel, trying to divide the follicular unit into single hair micrografts will often permanently damage all the hairs. Hair splitting into all single hairs also limits the amount of density you can achieve on one session. Remember that since follicular units have generally 1-3 hairs, on average you will have around 2.3-2.5 hairs per follicular unit graft. Thus, 1000 follicular unit grafts will give you 2.3-2.5 times more hairs per graft than 1000 single hair micrografts. Another example of a non-follicular unit micrograft would be to try to transplant 2 single hair follicular units as one micrograft. Since the two single hair FUs aren’t growing together as a natural group, transplanting it as a single graft leaves more skin between the two hairs which looks less natural even though it’s still a micrograft by definition since it only has 2 hairs. For these reasons, I only harvest and transplant hairs as follicular units for the most natural results.
Q.What are the new surgical techniques available for women and men?
A. Follicular unit transplantation is currently the best technique available for hair transplantation in both women and men. I use only the latest and most up to date follicular unit transplantation techniques in my practice. |
