(cheerful lively guitar music)
- [Narrator] The day of the actual procedure begins early
and Mark is picked up from his home at 7:30 a.m.
HRBR supplies a discreet and private chauffeur service
for any surgical patient that requires it.
It's one less thing for them to worry about,
and ensures that they arrive relaxed and on time.
The anticipation of the surgery day can sometimes
lower blood sugar levels, so Mark has been encouraged
to eat a good breakfast which will counter this.
Once at the clinic, he is shown to a private room
which will be his for the day.
To help make him more comfortable, each room has
a TV and entertainment system, and complimentary WiFi.
While he gets settled, the team gathers
in the conference room to discuss his case.
- Morning everyone, our patient this morning is
Mark Berry who is a 37-year-old gentleman who was
first attending us in September last year.
- [Narrator] There will be a team of over 20 people
solely dedicated to Mark's procedure,
so the lead surgeons present his medical history
and go through the plans for the day.
They also discuss the number of hair grafts
they are likely to transplant throughout the day.
- Certainly I'd be disappointed if we don't get
three and a half thousand, so.
The more the merrier.
- Good morning Mark, how are you?
I'm Aoife, I'm the nurse looking after you today.
- [Narrator] After the meeting, the surgeons
and nursing staff chat to Mark about
what to expect from the day ahead.
He is also asked to sign a consent form
and is given his pre-meds.
- And you're not on any medication for anything at all?
- No.
- That's good, so I'm gonna pop this little
ID band on you here.
- Mark, Aoife's going to give you some
what I call happy tablets.
It's a very, very mild form of sedation,
it's just to take the edge off the day for you.
- Okay.
- And it doesn't put you asleep,
but a lot of patients have a little snooze.
I would say it's a bit like going on a transatlantic flight.
It'll be tiring but relaxing, but at the end of the day
you're going to have substantially more hair
on the top of your head.
- Thanks a mill.
-Alright.
- But if you do have a little snooze, all the better.
- Okay.
- [Narrator] Mark is then brought into
the photography room.
The team have already done preliminary design work,
but it is now that it all comes together
to be fine tuned and agreed.
The whole team is involved with this process
and nothing will be decided without Mark's agreement.
- Now Mark, just to give you some idea,
if you'll hold the mirror there.
It's not a radical departure from your current appearance,
you'll see it's really a reinforcing.
- Sure.
- And when this strong hair from the back
gets in there, it'll look totally natural.
And then of course when the hair grows from here,
you'll be able to get a lower fringe,
so you'll be able to hide more of the forehead.
But you can style it whatever way you want to.
- Okay. - Okay.
What do you think of that now?
- Love it.
- Mark, I'll just get you to turn and look
into that corner for me there,
just chin down slightly please.
(camera clicks)
And look back around towards me and down towards the floor
so that I can see the top of your head.
(camera beeps and clicks) Perfect.
- [Narrator] Once the design has been agreed,
the donor area is prepared.
Mark is then taken into the theater
where the first half of the donor hair will be removed.
- And you'll feel a little bit like a bee sting,
first couple of stings, and then you won't feel
very much at all, and we're gonna clean the area first.
- [Doctor] How are you doing there, Mark?
- Great Maurice. - Okay.
- Really good.
- So I prefer patients to put their mind somewhere else
rather than focusing on what we're going.
- [Mark] Sure, okay.
- So you've just won the lotto, it's two million,
and you can plan how to spend it.
I can give you help you know.
- [laughs] Okay Maurice.
- Okay doke. - Thanks a mill.
- [Narrator] The donor strip is a long, narrow strip
taken from the area of permanent hair
that's unaffected by the balding process.
The procedure requires only a local anesthetic
so, although slightly sedated, Mark is awake the whole time.
- Mark, how are you feeling?
- Brilliant, yeah, yeah. - Great.
- I must admit I had a bit of a doze.
- Good, that's good, it makes it all go faster as well.
It all went really well, very straightforward,
to take the first part out.
So we'll get you through in the next room now,
and we'll have you in the opposite position,
so relaxing backwards.
So far you're not in any discomfort there at all?
- Honestly no, like I think it was just the
few initial kind of...
- Yeah, the pinches.
- The pinches, but there afterwards I was just as
comfortable as I would be on my home couch
having a snooze.
- Steady on, but great. (laughs)
- [Narrator] The strip is removed in two halves,
one in the morning and one after lunch.
This means that the hair grafts are out of the body
for the shortest time possible.
While Mark is finishing up in theater,
the donor hair is taken into the adjoining lab
where it is first divided into strips,
a process known as slivering, and then finally
separated into individual grafts ready for transplantation.
Each graft may contain between one and four hairs.
A team of highly-skilled nurses and technicians
will spend the whole day preparing and
coordinating the grafts.
The high-quality microscopes used for this purpose,
uniquely by HRBR, have set an industrial gold standard.
Mark is then brought into the planting room
where the actual transplant will take place.
A good transplant should be unnoticeable,
so there's a special emphasis on the design of the hair line
as it's this area that is most visible.
The team begin making the hundreds of miniature incisions
that will receive the grafts.
All these incisions are made randomly
but in very specific directions
to create a truly natural look.
Despite the fact that he's undergoing surgery,
he is not in any pain, and will be able to kick back
and watch a movie or two.
- [Doctor] How are you, Mark?
- [Mark] Yeah, really good.
- [Doctor] He's really good.
- [Narrator] Immediately after lunch,
the second strip is removed.
- [Doctor] I'm just about to take the strip out now.
- [Narrator] And once it's done, Mark returns
to the planting room for the remainder of the afternoon.
Planting is a slow and exacting process for all concerned,
requiring a high level of concentration
and manual dexterity, and it's this attention to detail
that has made HRBR the leading clinic in its field.
- [Doctor] Here are your hairs, this is a single follicle.
- Okay.
- And as you can see one little hair sticking out
and one little black dot at the end,
that's the base of the hair there, the root of it.
And all it needs to do is be plunked into
a little hole that has potential blood supply
that it can then survive on.
There's a double, and a triple, and a quadruple.
See the four hairs? - Yeah, yeah.
- The singles and the twos we will place
nearer to the front which is more visible.
It's essentially feathering out of the hair line
from kind of dense forelock at the front,
and we feather it out.
- Amazing. - Yeah.
- Okay Mark, that's it' we're just doing
the last final little check there,
but all the grafts are in.
Basically you're gonna be spraying every 20 minutes
this evening, try and spray through til seven a.m.
- Okay.
- Lie down and sleep then for a few hours
until maybe 11 or so, and then we'll see you back here
tomorrow for a check up at around 12.
- This is going to make a spectacular difference.
- We will get you to sit forward a little bit there, Mark.
- Now Mark, I'm just going to bring you to the mirror here.
So what do you think?
- My God, I think it's actually amazing.
To know that there's 3,000 gone in, what,
near close to 4,000 is pretty spectacular.
And to know that I actually didn't really
feel that much pain throughout the whole day.
- [Doctor] Come on Mark, you didn't feel any pain.
- I didn't feel any pain. (doctor laughs)
- We'll make sure that you have no pain during the evening,
we'll give you some pain killers to take.
- Perfect, appreciate that.
- But the nursing staff will go through
everything with you now.
- Okay, great. - Okay.
- Thank you, thanks Maurice, I really appreciate it.
- You've been a great patient. - No, thank you.
- And I'll be seeing you tomorrow morning for a checkup.
- [Narrator] It's been a long day but before Mark leaves
he's given some post-op advice and a take-home kit
to assist him in caring for the newly transplanted grafts
over the initial few days.
- Okay Mark, this is your spray bottle, okay?
This is your best friend for the next 12 hours, okay?
- Okay.
- So we want you to spray up nice and close,
a couple of inches away, really blast it.
(water spray rustles)
You want to hear that kind of sound coming out of it.
Every 20 minutes spray the whole top of your head
and the stitches.
Do some spraying with your right hand
and do some spraying with your left hand,
and that way you won't miss any areas, okay?
A bit of alcohol hand gel, just keep your hands
really nice and clean for the first few days
when you're spraying, because in case you do touch
your hair without thinking about it.
So just put it on like hand cream and let it dry.
Any problems, your surgeons' while mobile numbers are here.
And that's your design, okay?
So that's pretty much where they all went
and what went where, okay?
So we have all the way back to just this line here,
to the very top, right up to the top of the crown.
So you got coverage the whole top of your head basically.
- Brilliant. - Yeah, super.
- Thanks Aoife.
Well, that was a day.
Exciting, I suppose now it's off home
to spray my hair for the next 12 hours, you know?
So yeah, very exciting.
I started off a bit apprehensive and a bit nervous,
you know, going in, but I must admit
once I met with the guys, met with the team,
went in for the operation, once I had a bit of a snooze,
and then next thing went in and started getting
some of the grafts were put in.
But throughout the whole day it was just,
it was a really, really comfortable environment.
And, you know, 3,700 at the end of the day,
you know, you can't beat that,
so I'm really happy.
I'm trying to think of how I'm going to keep myself
awake, but I've got a few alarms clocks going off around me,
it shouldn't be a problem.
Good, thanks. - Good luck.